Hi All,

I would strongly recommend NOT to use lavasoft Ad-Aware... I will preface the rest of my statements with the fact that I haven't used it on XP, but I installed an earlier version on win98 and it completely stuffed up my internet access.....

this occurred because it detected a non-standard FTP stack, one that was designed to access the non-standard IP addresses, and when I uninstalled the other program (as recommended by adaware), no more internet... it took some very intricate manoeveres (?) to get my internet back....

If you use a personal firewall... simply remove all permissions for all applications, then watch what applications ask for permission to access the Internet... a little bit of common sense will tell you if you have spyware or a malignant program on your disk.

Cheers,
Chris.