I have Zone Alarm free version firewall, and AVG antivirus free version. I was asked today by ZA soon after booting up the computer whether I wanted to give permission to Internet Explorer to accept connections from the internet. I clicked on the "more info" button and the ZA website told me to deny permission because the only reason that IE would ask for permission to act as a server is if it was compromised. AVG scan shows no virus. I have been having problems for weeks with IE having an error whenever you close it. The info in the Event Viewer for the error is just "The description for Event ID ( 1001 ) in Source ( Microsoft Internet Explorer ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. The following information is part of the event: 171397962." The microsoft web crash site says there is no info about my problem. Any ideas? PM

I have had Zone Alarm request server status too. Just deny it! If you were using Sygate, it grants server status by default and it is up to the user to deny server status in the advanced settings. I never thought it was caused by a compromise though. If you are concerned about a possible compromise use the security scan at Kasperky's http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner

You may wish to download and use Adaware and Spybot Search & destroy to scan for malicious programs. Rule #1: Good Computers don't go down. Rule #2: There is no such thing as a good computer.