Help me secure win xp

Hi everyone, I got Internet at my girlfriends house now and it didn't take nothing but a couple minutes for her computer to become target practice for many adaware and viruses (running win xp)....I had to reinstall her computer and tried to update windows right away but I got another virus and a RPC error came up!!! I later find that the windows update site was attacked by a hacker who put a virus on the site, and Microsoft is offering a $250,000 dollar reward to whoever finds this person (cheap bill gates...I mean come on, he prob makes that much taking a piss) anyways, because XP sucks so bad and that I only use win 2000 and linux, I am wanting some advice about how to keep her computer safe and secure. I had to take her computer to my house because I have a firewalled router, enable to update windows to SP2. I changed the account type to power user, I have firefox as the default browser, I have Norton Antivirus, and I have Microsofts Adaware remover. So I am hoping this all should do the trick but I would like some suggestions.

Thanx everyone for the help!

Power User is too high if she doesn't know what she's doing.

Get ZoneAlarm. It is pretty good. Have her get off the Internet to install files under a different account. Tell her to pay attention to the sites she surfs.

I couldn't get some apps to work like some p2p apps if I didnt have at least power user privileges. She wants to be able to make some mp3 cds. So I dont have to worry about her at least downloading apps or anything like that off the p2p networks..

Oh, one other thing, once I turned her account from admin to power user, it stopped auto logging her in and now user select screen comes on and shows the administrator account and then her account. Do you know how to have it so her account will automatically log in?

i forget how to auto-logon.

what i wanted to say is that you should not encourage her to use P2P services. That is the way a majority of bad things get passed to a computer. Once you give someone access to your disk, it's all over. Very bad.

Have look at this post a made a few days ago:

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...64#post1972764

well so far the computer has been running great with no signs of viruses or adware! I did have to change her account to administrator because the greating card software said you had to be admin to run the program...

You should try running the software from her limited account, by right-clicking on thje icon, and selecting RUN AS and supplying the admin usename and password. It should allow her account to run the program, and then the next time she logs on with her normal account, the program should run.

If that doesn't work for that program, then you could use VB to create a program that will start her greeting card program as an administrator. it should make sure that she isn't online during that time, too. just to keep things safe

wow, havent thought about making a vb program to do that. Well, you see my gf is pretty much, ill just go out and say it, a b*$&% and say such things as, "I NEVER HAD TO DO THAT BEFORE" and "THIS IS STUPID, NO ONE ELSE HAS TO DO THIS" and "YOU KNOW WHAT, I DONT EVEN WHAT THE COMPUTER, I DONT SEE WHY YOU EVEN GOT IT FOR ME". And all this would come out because she is too lazy to right click and enter password which would take a few more seconds then just double clicking...

it kind of defeats the purpose of having the admin account, if anyone can just double click to become the admin for a program, but, if it is for a gf, then the chance of abuse is pretty low. my dad had a user account on his machine with no password, and an admin account with a password. he never used the admin account. i finally made them both admin ac****s so Windows Updates would run. (primarily so SP2 would run on his dialup line) He didn't have any problems so I have left it that way. Knock on wood...

"I NEVER HAD TO DO THAT BEFORE" I can't tell you how many times I've heard that since installing Firefox on his machine. He wanted me to remove it for the first two weeks, but now he has it under control. Go DAD!