I'll try to keep this brief, haha. Ok so I was watching "Iron Man" the movie with Robert Downey Jr. and when it got to the part where he began perfecting his suit, I noticed how nifty it was when he was talking to his computer and it was responding back with intelligence and reasoning. Like it actually had emotions.

So I got online and ran a search for AI and voice recognition and to my surprise, I found a program that is actually capable of doing what Iron Mans computer did. But you have to teach it and interact with it a LOT before it will ever come remotely close to his. So I bought the program and began using it, and it seems to be learning very well as long as I type what I say to it. But when I try talking to it, it doesn't input what I say, instead it inputs other stuff. I'll give an example...

I say: "Hello"
Computer thinks I said: "better than th" (sentence fragment, they're different everytime)

And then the AI responds to what the computer thought I said and I end up with some totally off the wall response, when all I said was "hello". And it's usually quite humorous too lol.

I am using windows xp home, which has its own built in voice rec (VR) located in control panel / speech. XP's built in VR is required for the particular AI program I have. I've gone through the training section in the VR and completed each 10 minute training section two times each, but still, it does not dictate my words properly into my AI program. I've made sure that the VR/dictating default language is set to english: united states, so I know that's not the problem.

This is the 1st time I've dabbled in VR and AI technology so I really don't know much about it, and more importantly, how to get it working correctly. So here I am... I'm hoping that somebody here can help me figure this out who's done it before and got theirs working. That would be awesome.

Yeah I did realize that threatfire was eating up the most resources, but regcure and xp smoker compensate for it pretty well with exception of a slower shutdown time when shutting the computer down or waiting for it to restart, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for added security.

The 2 firewalls aren't really a problem since I shut off the program control in blackice. So now it's more like half a firewall, so to speak. The intrusion detection in both programs work very well together without conflicts and both detect different things. Whatever Zone doesn't detect, Blackice does and vice versa. I'll admit that I had problems at 1st and it took me a while to figure them out before I finally got them both running stable together. But I see your concern and I thank you for it, most people will just let someone find out the hard way and keep their mouth shut.

Since you guys are on the topic of Linux, I have a couple questions. I've never used Linux before but I hear good things about it, so my questions are... Is it free like I've heard? Can it be installed on a computer designed for windows? And if so, where can I get it?

Great post Xen! I couldn't agree with you more, and thanks for the hosts file info; I learned something new!

So anyways, I thought I'd share a bit more knowledge of my own that may be helpful to some people. I've never had any schooling on computers but I've been using them since EGA monitors, 286 processors, 4MB HD's, 2400baud modems, DOS, and Quickmenu were the best on the market. For those of you who have no idea what I just said, that was before Microsoft Windows was put on the market. Quickmenu was the windows for that era. So if anything I say here is wrong or inaccurate, please, by all means, tell me so I can learn more.

Just like Xen talked about, I can't stress enough how important it is to have a firewall, antivirus, and antimalware suite setup on your computer, especially in this day and age. I personally go beyond just those three because I'm such a security nut who values the life of my machine.

Now... While it's good to have at least one of the three defenses I mentioned above, you should know that no program is going to find and block absolutely everything. Not even the high priced commercial stuff; however, you can come pretty close if you build the right suite with the right programs. I shall demonstrate shortly. But 1st you should know a couple important things.

1st. It is not always good to run more than 1 firewall or antivirus at the same time unless you find the right ones or unless you know how to set your options to make them work together, but you will still have bugs in most cases. Running more than 1 at the same time causes them to conflict and leads to an unstable system and eventually a nice crash to freak you out.

2nd. You can never have too much security.

3rd. You can never have too many antimalware programs. Just don't run them all at once or you will be asking for a crash. Only have a maximum of 2 running and make sure they work well together too! The rest should be ran manually and be sure to shut down the ones you leave running all the time before you do, just to be on the safe side, but this isn't always required.

Moving on... So here is a list of what I use and some info about them.

***ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite*** (Paid)
This is an all-in-one suite that contains an easy to use set of security apps all in the same app. It has a firewall with built in intrusion detection that will tell you detailed info about any and all intruders trying to access your system. It has an enhanced but still traditional antivirus. By traditional I mean that it relies on a definition file that scans for distinctive signatures of known threats and therefore has a harder time picking up on anything that has not yet been analyzed and given a signature. ZoneAlarm has it's own antimalware scanner and a nifty application control feature that will tell you of all programs on your computer that try to access the internet, and gives you the option to block or allow. It also has identity theft protection with encryption that allows you to protect sensitive data such as passwords and any personal info you choose. It has gaming mode that lets you halt all popup messages during full screen gaming. And my favorite of all, the halt all internet traffic feature that you can manually turn on or set it to turn on when the screensaver comes on. So you don't have to worry about intruders when you're away from the computer when the option is on, nothing comes in or goes out. And like any good security app, it has all sorts of privacy settings to play with and make you say wow.

***BlackICE PC Protection, Intrusion Countermeasures*** (Paid)
This is a very simple but powerful firewall that focuses primarily on intrusion detection and program control. You do have the option to disable the program control portion of it because trust me, it gets annoying when the program is so powerful that it even recognizes and tries to block itself from  launching some of its own features. And even more annoying when you have to keep clicking "allow" on startup items to let your computer load up when you turn it on. Since I have program control on ZoneAlarm, I have it turned off in BlackICE to avoid annoyances and conflicts. Zones is more intelligent and knows the difference between safe and dangerous programs that try to launch, and therefore gives you minimal annoyances. BlackICE just blocks everything until you tell it otherwise, which can be good in some situations. I use it for the intrusion detection though because like I said, no single program will detect everything, 2 is always better than 1 when they don't conflict.

***PC Tools Threatfire*** (Free)
This is an antivirus and antimalware program that may be ran alongside another antivirus program, it's even recommended though not neccessary. This antivirus is unique from others in that it does not rely on definitions or signatures to detect viruses or malware. Instead, it scans using behavior based algorithms. Meaning that it will be 10 times more likely to find a new and unknown virus than a traditional signature based antivirus will, all based on how viruses behave. Cool huh? It also uses the same technique for malware scanning and it has a cool system monitor feature as well. I highly recommend this app to everyone.

***Malwarebytes' Antimalware*** (Paid)
The name says it all. This is a very powerful antimalware app that will pretty much find it all, including some legitimate things if you're not careful with it. I use to use Spybot and Adaware but when I got this app, the other two quit finding stuff so I got rid of them.

***Trend Micro HijackThis*** (Free)
This is the antimalware of all antimalware apps. It is definitely not for the novice user. I don't really use this one very much because even I am not skilled enough to recognize what it tells me. But I keep it on hand because there are numerous forums where you can go for malware support and most of them ask you to install this app, run it, and show them the log file that it generates after it scans so that they can tell you how to fix your problem. It's that good...

***Advanced Systemcare*** (Free)
This app is more for cleaning and maintaining your system. It has it's own disk defrag, junk remover, history and tracks cleaner, and even an antispyware/adware feature. This is the app that competes with System Mechanic, and I must say it's a worthy competitor, especially for being free. Though it does have a paid version which unlocks some features that the free version doesn't let you use. I use it for the cleanup and the antimalware so I care not about the pro features.

***Hide IP Platinum*** (Paid)
I'll go ahead and mention this one even though I'll be replacing it because my subscription is expiring soon. This is another one where the name says it all. It hides your IP address when you're online and changes it to a new IP through anonymous proxies. Basically it makes you invisible to other people or machines on the net so that you are extremely hard to find or trace, making it safer for you to surf the net and avoid hackers.

***Keyscrambler*** (Free)
This is a keystroke encryptor. It encrypts every button you type over the net and it only loads up when you open your web browser. It delivers peace of mind when typing personal info over the net because only you (the sender) and the receiver can see what you are typing. Anyone who tries to intercept what you type only sees a lot of encryption. And it's not worth them trying to decrypt it when there are millions of easier targets to move onto. Anyways, this is definitely a must have for all security nuts.

***McAfee Site Advisor*** (Free)
This app is another must have for security nuts. It adds a little box to your toolbar in your web browser that changes between 4 colors when you visit sites or do searches. These colors represent the safety level of the website. Think of it as a traffic light with an extra color. Red for stop (dangerous site), yellow for caution (site has both good and bad contents), green for go (safe site), and gray for unknown or not tested yet. When doing searches on the major search engines, it puts a little icon beside every result and can you guess what they are? Yep, they are one of the 4 colors so you know which results are safe to click on. You can mouse over the icons to get a tiny window with some more info about the result too, very useful for the caution icons.

_______________________________________

So there you have it, that is my "build your own security suite" for this year.  I hope it will give some of you who are here for advice on security apps some good ideas on what to try. Now there's one more sort of important thing for beginners and novices to know here. Security apps (specifically all-in-one suites and antivirus apps) eat up system resources and slow your machine down significantly. There is no getting around it, especially on machines with low RAM (like below 1gb RAM). But there are steps you can take to help compensate for some of that speed loss. Thus, I proudly introduce to you...

***Regcure*** (Paid)
This app allows you to scan, detect, and fix registry errors safely and securely even if you have no idea what the registry is. It also scans for junk files, broken links, invalid paths, and startup errors. Out of all the registry cleaning apps I've tried over the last few years, this one does it's job very well and in a timely fashion unlike most others. After running this app, you will gain back some of the speed you lost from installing security apps. If you have less than a gig of RAM you will notice a difference, more than a gig you probably won't notice anything but rest assured that it still did it's job.

***XP Smoker Pro*** (Paid)
This app allows you to tweak various windows settings that will optimize your windows xp to run at it's fastest. It will optimize everything from your CD drives to the internet, to your system core itself so that everything runs as fast as your hardware allows. Use extreme caution with this app though and make sure you set a restore point before using the program everytime so that you avoid possible headaches if you mess something up by mistake. Very powerful app and well worth it to gain more speed and performance.

With the size of my security suite, it slowed me way down, these two apps alone put my systems speed back to it's normal speed it had before installing all my security. The only apps I leave running at all times are the ZoneAlarm, BlackICE, Threatfire, and Hide IP. The rest I run manually on a regular basis, although most of the time when I'm not surfing the web, I usually unplug the internet and shut down all my security except BlackICE, so I can enjoy even faster than average performance speeds. It's great for watching movies or playing games, or just messing around with whatever when I'm offline and unplugged.

Ok this book needs to end sooner or later or I'll set here and talk about security all day. This post is intended for the beginners and novices out there who want to learn a few basic tips. But I'd like an expert opinion on my suite selection if possible.

Later all, hope this helps!

We've discussed this very issue almost everyday of class at school for the past 2 or 3 weeks now. My teacher made a similar comment about there needing to be a big incident to get rid of MD5. But even so, she still relies on MD5 in her day job. She's a juvenile prosecutor in my county who also heads up the cybercrime prosecutions and gathers evidence for them, and then comes and teaches us about cybercrime at night classes. She's a busy woman, and gorgeous to boot!

Personally, I think there will be a significant amount of breaches into some of the more trusted software out there this year. Like firefox for example, it's not impenetrable but it is one of the safer browsers to use, but for how long?

On another note, I think we'll see some newer innovations in the way that some of the pre-existing software operates. Like antivirus apps for example, most of which run traditional scans based on signatures and definitions of known threats but aren't that great at detecting the unknown in most cases. The emerging of behavior based scanning is one thing that I think has potential to show it's face more this year than last. Because with it, you can detect both known and unknown, old and new threats or however you wanna put it. I use both types, and it works great. Plus you don't have to worry about conflicts that way because they operate in two completely different ways.

Of course none of us know what the future will bring but there's nothing wrong with a little optimism.

Thanks for the help. Next time I'll have a bit more knowledge if anything like that ever happens again. I do have hijackthis installed on this machine but I've never had any problems with this one. It's usually unplugged from the net unless I'm checking mail or coming to places like this or doing research for school work. Basicly it's only online when I need it to be and that's it, and my defenses are pretty strong.

As for the computer that crashed and burned (literally), I agree with you Jason in that there were probably two problems like you said. Since the machine is not even usable until I buy a new mobo and cpu, I don't think I need to worry about the malware coming back or surviving through my home network. My home network only consists of a router and a ps2 but I never even got the chance to hook them up before the big crash happened, the PC was directly plugged into the cable modem the whole time. I've already wiped the HD with that copywipe boot disk. I went ahead and let it do the full 36 passes just to be safe. So it's ready to be formatted and installed on soon as I get my mobo and cpu. Thanks to my buddy at school for letting me plug it in to his PC to do the wipe.

Thanks for the input guys. Unfortunately I wasn't able to fix the problem before it totally fried my motherboard and cpu, so now I'm coming to you from my laptop. Evidently the malware that I had was attached to the system BIOS on the motherboard before I ever installed anything or got on the net. That's what I get for using a motherboard that was used when I got it (christmas gift). I didn't know it was even possible for a virus to infect a motherboard. I'm still not sure I believe it but that's what I was told.

Anyways, one of my buddies at school sent one of his IT friends over to my house to take a look at it for me. He started running a bunch of tests and looked through my system. And when he was done he told me about some trojan dropper containing a logic bomb. He said it had progressed too far to clean it and suggested that I run a program called "copywipe" and do 8 passes, followed by a fresh reformat and reinstall of windows. He also told me that the bomb was activated by using my function keys and by clicking on "restart" to restart the computer. And each time I used one of these functions the malware got worse and worse and spread further into the system. All the while disguising itself as legit system files with real system filenames that antivirus overlooks.

So he asks me what all I have done and where I've been on the net and I told him that I had just got this computer for christmas (late gift) and all I've done is installed windows and SP2 and my antivirus, and I used google image search a couple of times to try to find some cool wallpapers. Other than that I've done nothing except let windows update download SP3 for me, and that's when stuff started happening. He said he didn't see anything wrong with what I've done except that I should have installed my antivirus 1st and foremost just like you guys suggest. I got Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2009 for like 60 bucks. I could be wrong but I think it requires SP2 before you can install it, otherwise I would've done it 1st because I'm a security freak. Haha I'm running 6 forms of security on this laptop with no conflicts.

Well, we came to the conclusion that I was given an infested motherboard after watching the computer crash and auto restart itself followed by a screen full of weird symbols and a complete shutdown with smoke coming out of my case. That's when he told me about motherboard malware attaching itself to the BIOS.

So now that you've read my book (sorry), any 2nd opinions? I don't know that I believe the motherboard malware thing because I've never heard of anything like that before. But that doesn't mean it's not possible just because I haven't heard of it, I know there's a lot I haven't heard of. Heck, I still don't know much about computer language and I've been using computers since DOS and Quickmenu were all you had before windows 3.1 came out. Haha, 2400 baud modems and gaming BBS's were the most awesome things ever! So I like to think I know a little bit. This is the 1st time I've ever had a bad problem like this, especially one that caused a system crash ending in a ball of smoke. And get this, when I tore the computer apart afterwards, there was a nice big black spot under the cpu both on top and underneath the motherboard where the cpu is. And the cpu itself got so hot that it stuck to the heatsink and nearly all the little pins that are suppose to be attached to it stayed on the board. All I could say was "wow". I'm glad it was just a gift, but then again, I have a feeling that's why it was a gift considering the source.

Ok I'm sorry for the book. Bring on the 2nd opinions, this is a learning experience for me.

I need some help please. I just got this computer up and running and installed winxp home. I made it as far as service pack 2 and I downloaded service pack 3 but before getting a chance to install it and my antivirus, I experienced a virus attack. Now my security center says my auto updates are turned off but when I open the auto update window, it shows it set to download and install updates automatically. The next problem is when I click the link to take me to windows update site, it takes me to google but it still shows windows update in the address bar. And finally, my antivirus says I'm not connected to the internet and therefore cannot update itself, but obviously I am on the net right now. I can go anywhere on the net that I want to except for places having to do with security or updating.

My antivirus found a few viruses using it's default definition files that it came with and successfully removed them and now the computer is acting normal except for these updating issues. 2 of those viruses were both called "Mal_Otorun" if that helps any. They were found on C: and infected the default autorun.inf file, it could not be cleaned and was deleted, it also infected my system restore point files, so now I can't even restore back to anything before the virus happened.

Can anyone help me fix this? I would be very greatful!