Securing your fresh Windows XP install ..

How to Secure your Windows XP?
Whenever you install windows XP fresh, along with the hardware drivers, make sure you install these 3 software first.

1. Software Firewall
2. Anti-virus
3. Anit-Malware/Spyware/Trojan

Software Firewall - Comodo Firewall pro (Free)
My objective is to use the freeware alternatives. So when it comes to software firewall, I trust Comodo's Firewall Pro which is absolutely free and works like a charm. Not a resource-hog like Zone Alarm. Initially, you may feel a little annoyed by constant confirmations thrown by the Firewall pro's Defense+ mechanism. But let that be. After some days, the firewall will train itself to your applications and won't alert you. You may be required to allow the Firewall software to obtain a life-time free license.

Anti-Virus - Avast 4.8 Home Edition (Free)
Avast and AVG are two contendors in free anti-virus space. Personally I like Avast because it detects most of the viruses and helps me keep my system clean and safe.

Anti-Malware / Spyware - Spybot Search & Destroy (Free)
One of the best anti spyware around. Though a little slow, it is an acceptable trade-off for being a free software. SS&D actually helped me to clean the malware in my system previously. This nifty piece of sofware's malware signature are constantly updated and keeps your system clean.





Next Level - 3 steps to troubleshoot Malware/Trojan attacks
Installing the above 3 software may not guarentee that your system may run trouble free. In some unfortunate circumstances a virus, or malware or trojan may enter your system. In such cases, don't panic. Try the following methods.

Step 1 : Run your Anti-virus and Anti-malware software first. Enable a boot-time scan in your Anti-virus and then restart the system. Boot time scan will detect and remove most viruses.

Step 2 : Run msconfig.exe and find out if any unwanted programs are included in the Startup tab. In most cases, the trojans/viruses run as a EXE or DLL file with a random-generated filename. Check-out those suspicious files. Enable boot-time scan and restart the system. This should help in finding the trojans/viruses.

Step 3 : On a little advanced level use these two software. HijackThis and LSPFix. Hijack this is a tool which will generate a complete list of processes (as a text file) that forms your windows startup. Most of the illicit processes can be found this way. Also HijackThis offers some swiss knife tools like - Removing an entry in the next startup, etc. Such options are useful to force-disable notorious malwares which uses system startup to launch itself. LSPFix is a winsock repairer. If your windows XP's winsock layer is damaged, you cannot access internet. LSPFix will try to identify if your winsock is damaged and rectifies it.


Conclusion:
Doing the above should get rid of your problems in most cases. Always remember to update your virus signature files and spyware signature files.