Firstly, many apologies if this is in the wrong forum, I've been having a search round the place and think I'm on the right track!
Hoping you techy folk could help this newbie out! I've been reading a few articles on here and searching the forums but could do with checking my understanding is correct and asking a few questions!
Little bit of background - I'm currently waiting for my broadband to be connected and this will be the first time I've been online with my home PC. It runs XP and I'm guessing I haven't got the SP2 upgrade (or any other updates for that matter). It came with Norton installed on it but from what I read, there are better free alternatives.
The main points I could do with help with..
I read in one of your articles that my PC could become infected within a matter of minutes after going online. Obviously I'd like to protect myself ASAP and I get the impression I need a firewall, anti-virus software and also adware & spyware. If this is correct, should these be done in any particular order (and should I try and download SP2 and other updates before all these or afterwards?)?
I'm looking at Zonealarm, AVG, adaware & Spybot - do these seem like sensible choices? (Do they work together? Are there better free alternatives? Are they the sort of program I think they are???)
I also read that you shouldn't have two of the same sort of programs installed - If I'm right that I'm better replacing Norton, how do I go about uninstalling it?
Finally, is there anything I've missed that I should know about? (I've read the article about the product updates & activex control stuff)
Sorry to bombard you with so many questions, your help would be very much appreciated and I apologise if the answers are already here somewhere!
Thank you
B