I'm having some trouble with my computer. A few days ago my cable internet service was suspended because they detected a virus and a bunch of open ports on my computer. I got rid of the virus (it was a Trojan) and changed my setup of Kazaa so that it was no longer a supernode. When I called back, they saw that the virus was gone, and the ports relating to Kazaa were closed, but there were still a few critical ports open. I need to close them before I can get my service back. Can anyone tell me how to close the ports on my machine? I have the numbers of the ports, and a sneaking suspicion which programs are keeping them open (a few sketchy toolbars have appeared on my internet browser, and I cant seem to get rid of them). I’m relatively familiar with Windows, and I don’t know if it’s worth it to pay 100.00 to have someone else do it. Can anyone give me some advice? L

you need a firewall. you can download zonelarm, which is free, from here

Absolutely Marc is so right... I had open ports on my PC when I switched to Cable. I have got Norton Firewall 2003 and I was amazed at the people who were attacking the PC. I got two viruses in the two days after Cable was installed that I couldn't get rid of... I finally had to format the whole harddrive and start again. After this little lesson I got a Firewall and also Ad-Aware... you have to be so careful now that you are connected 24-7. Once you have got a firewall you can test the security of your PC by going to the following ONLINE website... https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 Here you can test your Ports and Shields against hackers.... just to see how secure your PC really is. Good luck, Rich

Yea i also use Norton Firewall. I especially like the Ad Blocker which works wonders and another cool feature is the Visual tracking on a world map. Now that's cool :).

I've never used the Norton Firewall, but I run a few different things. First of all, and the best option, use an old machine (I mean something almost worthless like an pentium 75MHz system) go to www.smoothwall.org, from there is an ISO image to turn a computer in to a firewall/router w/intrusion detection. Put that inbetween your modem and your computer(s) and you should feel very safe. Otherwise, something along the lines of BlackIce works well, Tiny Personal Firewall, which USED to be free, work fairly well. But smoothwall wins, just because it's linux :p so any attack at a windows machine is worthless to the linux box, cause it won't effect it, let alone make it through.