Hi there... I just got ADSL and am running Zone Alarm and Avast on win98se. I am hoping that 98 is less of a target than XP for new viruses etc. I did a scan with noadware which found some stuff including keyloggers but then doesn't remove them without buying the full version. I got Adaware SE and ran that but it didn't find the keloggers and a couple of others things that noadware did. I wonder what free software I can trust to find all that nasty stuff and remove it. I don't really care about marketing cookies etc but keyloggers could be dodjy. But with the firewall is it even likely that anyone could get at the info? If it even exists? Should I try Spybot? Any advice greatly appreciated... thanks

I did a scan with noadware which found some stuff including keyloggers but then doesn't remove them without buying the full version. This is a buyer beware situation. Read this review of NoAdaware then judge for yourself if you do indeed have keyloggers. i_XpUser

And I'm afraid viruses are not too picky about which version of Windows they attack. XP has more security available with its own limited firewall & M$ antispyware, which seems to work quite well. For other free antispyware, look at the combination of Lavasoft's Ad-Aware, SpybotS&D & Spywareblaster. "I know that I'm mad - I've always been mad..."

thanks guys. XPuser's link was very useful and has eased my mind. One thing that noadware flagged as a keylogger was C:\Windows\System\Mciole.dll or very similar and I did a google search on mciole.dll and it seems to be a normal part of the OS. It's a bit of a minefield protecting yourself these days but I am glad I didn't fall for that one. Many thanks..

Well, I checked my system to see if I have Mciole.dll. I didn't. I looked up the net and found this. Mciole.dll appears to be part of Elite Keylogger. i_XpUser

most keyloggers, i have found, use windows files as cover to run. thats how they are difficult to spot. the good ones dont show up as adware/spyware. thats the whole point of a good keylogger. so you dont know its there. one way that you might know if you have a keylogger is to look at the running processes. if you have more svchost or csrss than you should have then thats a sign. i know quite a few of them use thoses processes. you should get to know exactly what processes are running. always. so that you can tell when something is amiss. if you a have keylogger that is trying to send email logs to its master i'm not sure how to detect that but i would imagine that if it tries to connect online then your firewall should pick it up at some point. maybe someone else would know that. you could always download and install an anti keylogger too. you can get versions free if you look at places like cnet and freedownloadcentre etc.

I am running windows 98 not XP so perhaps the mciole.dll doesn't exist on XP. I am thinking that noadware picked up some false positives as other scans have detected nothing serious. I opened mciole.dll in notepad and it is a 6KB file with some Microsoft wording at the end. Not sure if that means it's OK... I would like to learn more about what running processes to look out for. If i do ctrl + alt+ del I don't see anything like what davet noted above. But do I have to look beyond task manager to see what these processes really are. I saw a download that gives you info on running processes but am reluctant to download any more stuff I don't really know about!! Thanks again