Tony1966 wrote:

Don't worry about teaching me how to suck eggs - I need all the help
and advice I can get (clearly !!!) :-) - if there's anything I
already know I wouldn't care about reading it twice.

By your latest responses you've already raised two questions.

1) Text view for emails - I pick all my emails up through POP/SMTP
configured either on Outlook 2000 (ME) or Windows Live Mail Beta
(Vista) - aren't these text mails or have I completely misunderstood
the point

No. You can either view as plain text or html. The problem with html is
that it can autorun unwanted content and also link to external sites. I
don't have a Vista box to hand (I hate the OS and only have it installed
on my laptop which a friend is using at the moment). I think that
Outlook offers the choice of viewing in any of plain text, rtf or html
however I'm not an Outlook user. Ah, checking on O2003 which I do have
installed but not use, I can see the option to send in plain, rtf or html
but cannot find where to choose how to view incoming mail unlike Outlook
Express where the option is found at Tools | Options | Read.

2) Can I ask how you detect and close open ports on the router please

You can detecting open ports using a scanner such as that from Audit My Pc
(http://www.auditmypc.com/security-scan.asp). It can take quite a time to
check all 65 thousand odd as that scanner tests 2,500 at a time.

To close any incoming ports which you find are open and not explicitly
opened by yourself create a rule on the Netgear that closes the port. I'm
sorry but not having a Netgear router to hand at the moment I cannot
remember the commands to do this when logged on via the web interface but
I think you will find it quite intuitive. I think the left hand column
has an option that mentions creating rules, select, then new, give the
rule a name, select the port(s), UDP and/or TCP and then that they should
be closed. Save and then on the same or perhaps a different menu enable
the rule and whether to log or not.

I've had a look around at firewalls and I've got Kerio 2.1.5 on
standby - looks like a later release of the one I had on my system
before and I remember it was pretty easy to configure and train. I'm
going to try Jetico Personal Firewall first, just to be different.
--
Mike Maltby
MS-MVP Windows