Hi again all. I agree with Spit that some people are over paranoid about security issues. I use the list on the site I posted carefully. I don't follow every one of his recommendations, but there are a few that are serious risks. As for this pop up problem, I read about this a few months back. It's not about pop up ads on web sites. It's some other exploit, the details of which I don't remember at the moment. I've had the messenger service disabled for quite a while (which solves the problem), with no ill effects at all. It's not the MSN Instant Messenger (which is a pain in itself, unless it's something you use-I uninstalled it). I also use Black Ice, which has application protection similar to Zone Alarm.