Thanks for your informative and insightful response Norman.
I read it with great interest and thought.

Norman wrote:

The "localhost:port#" lines are the destination; my computer. The IP
address is the source of the probe. Port 135 probes are likely
messenger
spam. The Sasser worm is one of the common Windows infectors which
attacks
port 445.

Most Critical Upadates patch security problems. If you have never had
a site
attempt a drive-by download, you haven't been around the Internet
block.
I've seen numerous attempts at sleazy, underhanded system takeover. I
don't
normally use MSIE, but I have tested it against such a site, on
occasion,
when I find it; so far, with the latest Critical Updates, and proper
security settings for the "Internet zone" of MSIE, nothing bad has
happened.
But who knows, if I hadn't kept MSIE current.


Are we talking about attempts to access your computer for
the purpose of "Live Hacker" mischief as apposed to
preprogrammed Viruses and Email Worms, which can be
protected against with Anti-Virus programs?


randau wrote:

I'm wondering if there isn't a connection between the
endless procession of Critical Update patches and the
increasing instability of the operating system. Might I be
and have been better off ignoring the Critical Updates?


Definitely not! I have no stability problems with Windows Me, except
for
some random flakiness that seems to be a result of overheating the RAM
when
a P.S. fan died. I figure the hardware was seriously cooked and I am
running
on borrowed time.

Symantec products are notorious for causing problems. I have learned
which
ones don't affect Windows Me, and avoid the ones which do. When I had
paid
for a year of NAV, I never let it scan my email. Much flakiness seems
to
attend to either Norton Anti Virus, or McAfee Anti Virus, scanning
email.
Another Norton utility created problems, and never really did
anything. I
find a handful which are useful, though.


These random crashes occur when I'm not even running an
email program. There appears to be no correlation with
running any particular program or performing any particular
operation.

What Anti-Virus program would you recommend?



I read and post from the Google Groups web site...


My condolences. A proper news client is much superior. Even MS Outlook
Express is better than any web access to news groups. The only
web-to-news
interface worse than Google Groups is "Microsoft CDO for Windows
2000",
commonly used by posters in these groups because they stumble on the
groups
while searching the MSFT web site for assistance.


I've used several news clients before, but I found Google
Groups more useful for a number of reasons.

1) The terrific search capabilities of their extensive
Archive of past postings, especially computer related
groups.

2) All my stuff is archived at their site instead of my
having to store it.

3) Direct random access to any thread rather than the
chronological serial access that was used by news client
programs. If I posted to a highly active group and missed a
day or so of checking it, I had to download and wade through
enormous numbers of headers in order to get to what I was
looking for, using a news client program.
--
Regards,
randau

(is that better) :-)