NetNanny and Firewall

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Przemys³aw \"Pshemekan\" 
P³askowicki" <przepla at i...> wrote:

> 2. Windows -- http://www.windowsupdate.com is your best friend: set
> it to automatically install critical patches. Run it manually at 
> least weekly and install non-critical patches.

Which non-critical patches do I have to install? It says there 
are 43 of them for me, but most of them seem to be foreign languages.

I'll spare you my three-day-long saga (with vast e-mail help from a 
technie acquaintance) with the Critical Update that continually 
Failed to Install and broke a lot of other things: it *seems* to be 
solved now.

> 6. Use AdAware to check for spyware: 
> http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ (Free)

Thank you. It found 145 Evil Cookies (is that just my IE cookies, can 
it check Netscape 4.7 cookies? -- yes, I know I need to upgrade to 
Mozilla some day when I'm feeling brave) and seven Gator objects 
(they'e gone now), so I went searching and got educated on the 
evilness of Gator (and why it was still there despite having been 
uninstalled) at www.unwantedlinks.com - click on Consumer Info in 
menu bar for dropdown menu that has "what is Gator?" as last option.  

I welcome advice on how to keep Gator from sneaking in again.