I’ve been getting a lot of people asking me how to get rid of Virii that is installed on their windows boxes, here’s another follow up to my previous post.

If you want to play with Linux, and don’t want to hassle with an install, download the gnoppix or knoppix live cd (one is Gnome desktop, the other is KDE. I personally prefer Gnome, but they are both good). They are both based on the Debian distribution which has a superior package management system than RPM (Redhat Package Manager based systems). If you’re really hardcore, Gentoo is even better.

Basically, you just stick the cd in the drive and reboot (set your cd to read on bootup in the bios - by typing the “del” key when you reboot your PC). No need to get a second drive. Once you get comfortable and want to install linux, you can also do a dual boot with XP so when you boot up you can choose which OS to load.

As for firewalls, I use a hardware router/firewall. Much easier, especially with networking more computers. Hardware will block all incoming requests. If you go this route, it’s a good idea to get one with wifi and port forwarding (if you ever want to host anything on your computer).

And lastly, use FireFox instead of Internet Explorer. IE is one big security hole after another, and the source of most people’s virii problems.