Question to DELL-Jesse ... about critical update

I agree with your comment, but I was checking to see if they might have gotten a little better now. The only software I was worried about was XP. I keep all my other apps tuned, which should be an ongoing effort, not only when you receive a new box.

Checking for Critical Updates (and updating the Anti Virus definitions) should be the very first thing anyone does with a new system, as soon as they go on line.  The images installed at the factory will be out of date.  Sometimes very out of date.

What Flooby suggested is the second thing I'd do. The first thing to do is to make sure the XP firewall is enabled before connecting the machine to the Internet.

Jim

I might have suggested the very same thing, were it not for the fact that most of humanity seems to be eschewing the WinXP firewall for some overpriced, bug laden 3rd party firewall, which seem to frequently be responsible for the inability to connect to both Symantec and Windows Update.  ("Oh, Bluto, the Windows XP Firewall only blocks incoming traffic!")   

Well, it's the first firewall people have when they're starting XP, regardless of what they do next!  And there have been repeated horror stories about people getting their machine attacked while trying to download critical updates from Microsoft. I suspect jimntc already knew that - I was just saying that "for the record" and others reading this thread.

jimtnc, I think I saw a note somewhere that Dell had changed their shipping XP image recently to enable the XP firewall by default.

And we're certainly not giving Dell-Jesse a chance to get a word in edgewise, are we?

Jim

HeHe...Dell-Jesse is gonna have to scramble to get his two-cents in here. Yep!

I have a pretty good firewall built-in to my Linksys router, and zone-alarm usually never gets a chance to shine. From what I'm hearing, XP has the capability to set up logically partitioned drives (ie,D,E,F, whatever) AND has a built-in firewall also. Didn't know that. Sounds like I might not have to buy Partition Magic.

My reasoning for partitioning is to setup XP on it's own drive alone. It's worked out well before.

Does XP have a better mechanism to backup data or is that still something I'll have to provide for? I've used DriveImage faithfully for a long timeand it's served me well.

Thanks, guys.

Jim.