anybody get that red shield at the bottom right bar yet? WIth the popup message "from windows" .. No sure if I'd rather have a message from a virus than windows, but in this case it's a virus. Or more like a spyware. It just keeps on popping up. I have the cure somewhere, but it takes some copying and deleting. Will see if I can find it again. Anybody else get this?

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Well, that red shield in the system tray is not a virus or spyware.
It is the icon of security center of windows xp. It tell you to keep your computer safe by telling you when to update your anti-virus and wheather the firewall on your computer is on or not. As far as removal of that is considered I dont have any idea about it, but I'll suggest you to keep that as it only helps you in keeping your computer safe.

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Sounds like your running Windows XP Service Pack 2. This version of windows comes with a built in windows firewall and alot of security features. That red shield notifies you that some of those features are turned off and your computer is now vulnerable to hacker and virus attacks. One way to make that red shild go away is to actually turn on the firewall and other features, it wil make that icon trun green (i think) and sertanly get rid of those popups.

To turn it on right click on your My Computer icon and select Properties, thre you will see a tab saying something like Security or Firwall or something like that. Click on it and turn on all the features.
This is the reason i dont have Service Pack 2 cause that damn message is annoying and im just too lazy to go in and fix it

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Although I hate how it automatically restarts your computer after it updates, even if you don't want it to. What do they want? To force you to update whatever secret thing that Microsoft wants?

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