Right, this should be interesting to see your responses, especially the PC buffs in here.....

Yesterday I did a fresh install of windows XP Pro, booted off the cd, ran windows set up, removed ALL partitions, made a 40 gig partition, installed xp onto this partition, everything went fine, xp installed no problems......

Booted into windows, first problem, got messenger pop ups, so, went into msconfig and disabled messenger, fair enough, no problems.

Downloaded Firefox to try and minimise the chance of spyware, went onto the Microsoft site to "try" and update XP, daft site says I have to use IE to update, so, I run IE, go to the Microsoft Update site, set it retrieving the updates, it gets so far and the cable modem lights are flashing like crazy and it takes forever to retrieve a simple update, anyway, it finally finishes, but, then I start getting pop ups without even firing up a browser and when I C.A.D. the machine (CTRL ALT DEL) it shows stuff in the system manager that shouldn't be there, obviously spyware rubbish.

So, I download spybot search and destroy and adaware, two of the most well known spyware removal tools, run those, and adaware finds 300+ spyware infected items, I remove them, run spybot and yet another 20-30 infected items, some of which it cannot remove because they are running already *sighs*.....

So, I download zone alarm for some basic protection and AVG to check for viruses, guess what, AVG finds 10 of the damn things, 9 are Trojans and one is a Worm, and all this is within 10 minutes of doing a fresh install of windows xp pro.

So, tell me this, why oh why do people insist that windows is soooooo good, when it is extremely succeptible to attacks before you even get the chance to get things updated and sorted ?

As far as I am concerned, forget windows, move over to *nix and kick these problems in the head, a lot of people reckon that *nix is too complicated, well, Suse 9.2 is dead easy to install and run, heh.

Plus, with things like winex/cedega and crossover office, migrating to Linux has never been easier.

who insists it's good (at being secure)?

Your mistake was not to install the anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall before connecting to the net (download them somewhere else, keep them on a cd).

And before using IE to run windows update, use firefox to download sp-2 and install that.

Originally posted by Cyclone
who insists it's good (at being secure)?

Your mistake was not to install the anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall before connecting to the net (download them somewhere else, keep them on a cd).

And before using IE to run windows update, use firefox to download sp-2 and install that.

Yep....I'd go along with that Cyclone.
When i started my laptop up for the first time i uninstalled the free 'Snortin Norton' and installed AVG7 and Sygate personal firewall. Both downloaded using my desktop and scanned beforehand :thumbsup:

The disk you installed XP from, was it kosher XP disk, or a repackaged, 5 in 1 type?

It's been known for people to install spyware/virii from *third party* install disks, as the packager used their infected/infested installation to create an image.

Unlikely, but just a thought.

Or (assuming you have broadband) get a modem with built in firewall. Here I have my test bench behind a linux firewall, & can install & update any Windoze OS without picking up hitchhikers.

Or, like has been said, dump Windows. The Suse package sounds good, & Fedora is just as easy, & perfect for dual-booting.

If you have an older version of Windows XP (pre SP2) you can make re-installs a bit easier by following this...
http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20040908/winxp-sp2-integration-01.html

Thanks for the replies, interesting to see what people would say mainly.....

As regards SP2, tried that before, but, it makes the machine unstable and causes the system to reboot for no apparent reason, we know that SP2 was the cause as the machine was returned to the place where it was originally purchased from.

Steev, I think your referring to a dedicated box running something like IPcop or Smoothwall, this unfortunately is not possible as they don't have a spare box and neither do I, yet, but, when I can spare one, they shall be getting their own IPcop box, that might help to some degree.....

In addition to what has been said, the system IS dual boot now, XP and Suse 9.2, I have explained to the users that they should use windows as little as possible, just for games and so forth, but, spend as much time in *nix.

The disc ain't really kosher, it is a cracked version, but, it has worked for a long time without any problems like this surfacing.

Finally, even having a FW, AV prog and Spyware prog doesn't necessarily stop you having problems, you still have to have the latest updates for those apps, anyways, I just really wanted to see what you lot though, heh.

Getting a separate box/hardware firewall in there will be a help. I did read somewhere that these days an unpatched XP machine will be infected within 15 mins of being connected to broadband.
I'd recommend "ditching" that install now - set up a small partition, download SP2 and your preferred anti-spyware, anti-adware and anti-virus tools. Delete the system partition and reinstall XP. Run all the updates before connecting to your router and take it from there.
Think MS will be addressing this kind of situation soon, for instance a fresh install of Server 2003 won't let you do much until it's gone off and got all it's patches if I remember rightly.

Originally posted by Kry10
As regards SP2, tried that before, but, it makes the machine unstable and causes the system to reboot for no apparent reason, we know that SP2 was the cause as the machine was returned to the place where it was originally purchased from.



Originally posted by Kry10
The disc ain't really kosher, it is a cracked version, but, it has worked for a long time without any problems like this surfacing.



SP2 will break cracked versions of XP.


I have 0% symathy. You want free, get a *nix varient. Wanna pay, get a legal XP installation.

I had similar problems recently setting up XP on three machines, amazing how quickly they get infected. Nothing that couldn't be removed with a few passes of Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D and a good anti-virus program though.

Fortunately, Microsoft have finally woken up to these problems and the protections included in SP2, plus their recent trojan scanner, will make things better in the future. Not much help for someone with a pre-SP2 install disk though.

I have to disagree with you about *nix though. Sure, SuSE is easy to do a base install, but what comes next isn't easy. I recently abandoned a SuSE install after spending 3 days trying to get drivers for my wireless network card to work. Ditto Fedora. And I'm not exactly a Linux newbie, I first installed it in 1994 (and ever since then, Linux users have been trumpeting that a user-friendly Windows-beating desktop Linux is just around the corner). If it's that hard for me, I can't exactly see your average Joe Windows User switching any time in the near (or even distant) future.

Originally posted by Kry10


The disc ain't really kosher, it is a cracked version, but, it has worked for a long time without any problems like this surfacing.


:(
Bad start if you want a secure computer.