This section is for those of you who do not have much experience computers or the Internet. Everyone else can just skip this section, as it is likely to bore you into a coma. I am going to attempt to give you an idea of what some of the programs listed above do. I'll try to keep it simple and to the point, so read on.

    (>Firewall: This is a program that monitors your connections to the Internet. A good firewall will keep you computer 'behaving', reminding it to "not talk to strangers". Left on its own, your system will communicate with any other system that tries to connect to it. And this can be bad. Firewalls watch over this connection attempt and alerts you of what is going on behind the scene so you can decide whether to allow it or not. If you choose to allow the connection, the firewall will let things continue normally. If you block it, the computer trying to connect to yours simply will not get an answer, just as it wouldn't if your computer was turned off or you just wasn't connected to the Internet at that time.

    (>Pop-Up Blocker/Stopper: If you have been around the Internet much at all, you know what a pop-up ad is. You do a search for a web site that has some information you want, and when you click to open it the page appears...then a page appears on top of it...then another page appears on top of that one....and on and on. Welcome to advertising, Internet style.
    Pop-up blocking programs catch pages that try to open without you doing anything to get them to open. They simply close the pop-up window as it loads, saving you the time and trouble. But there is a continuous race between the makers of these programs and web page designers that create the pop-up ads, with the page designers always trying new ways to slip one past the blocking programs. For the most part these pop-up blocking programs do their job well, allowing you to spend more time finding what you want than closing ad windows you didn't ask for.

    (>Spy-ware & Ad-ware: To put it simply, spy-ware and ad-ware are programs that hide on your computer, monitoring things that you happen to use on, or be doing with, your computer. It then reports this to someone, somewhere...and you probably will not know it is even happening (unless you have a good Firewall, that is).The amount and type of information these programs gather and report vary widely between the individual programs themselves.
    The programs listed above search your system for known spy-ware and ad-ware, and then gives you the option to remove the offensive ones. Besides just spying on you, having spy-ware and ad-ware programs running can cause Windows to display error messages, run slowly, or even in some cases stop responding completely. So even if you are not worried about being spied on, if you have been experiencing any problems, you might want to consider using one of the removal programs listed above.

    Having covered most of the programs listed, I'll close with a few notes about some of the other jargon used above.
A 'BootDisk' (or start-up disk) is used to get you computer to a state where you can fix it when it will not load properly. A 'Driver' is a file that tells Windows how to use a device (keyboard, mouse, video card, sound card, printer) correctly.

    If you need any more help, please feel free to drop me an e-mail (address listed at bottom of this page).