Xp Sp2

[Bill Murray]

Hi Lads:

Slightly off the subject perhaps but I have disabled the IM function not only on this site but every other one that offers the service, at least for a while. As Geoff is well aware, I got royally hacked about this time last week and my puter became non-functional.

I had to hire someone who "fixes" such things to come to the house and fix three pcs plus set up my new laptop properly.

She charges a flat fee per pc, thank goodness. This one took her three hours to even work at all and then it locked up again yesterday. The different programs she downloaded to get rid of stuff found literally thousands of whatever those little buggars are called roosting in my hard drive and shutting me down.

She came by again last night and did more work and I think she got it this time. But.....amongst other advice, she said to be really safe I should not use IM myself and block it from the other side. As a test, I also got rid of MSN and am using Mozilla Firefox as a browser. It works and it is very fast but I have to learn to navigate a whole new system. As an aside, Geoff, she had to call for help and ended up installing something called Xoftspy to scan for bad guys. It found over 700 that the earlier program had missed or could not terminate. She also advised me to not allow cookies to be placed by the sites I visit if I am given a choice.
Again, slightly off subject but I though I would pass it on.
I can still be reached from the board via email.
Edit: Just had a thought. Am I mixing up IM and PM terms? I don't know if IM is an AOL exclusive or comes through MSN and I don't know how PM works either. Is that something that comes with these sites and not hooked to MSN or your ISP? If it is separate, I can re-open the PM option.
Bill