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Jim N'AZ

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it has no security center icon in control panel. I can find no help via searching its hd for Win helps in that area. It is a (lovely) little 10 year old Sony Vaio Z505RX Pent II running Win XP Home and runs quite well (has additional ram), but no firewall as far as I can tell.
Any idea as to how I can implement my security settings on this vintage laptop?
Regards, Jim
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Odds N' Ends album here:
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Z album here: http://www.pbase.com/jimh/marilyn_the_car&page=all
 
I had one of these, and it had both security and firewall.

Make sure you are looking in the administrator account. Also if it is not running SP3, you may want to do an update, as this may restore the missing piece.

I would make sure all the other windows updates are done before going for sp3.
 
You will probably need to run windows update on it a number of times to get all the latest updates and security fixes.
 
Microsoft included a firewall starting with SP2 onwards. Yours is likely to be SP1 or XP without any service packs. In order to get SP3 working, you'll need SP2 installed first. You can't go from XP (no SPs) to SP3. I tried it with a 10 year old Dell desktop and it didn't work.

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Never buy version 1.0 of anything.
 
wklee, for responding to my question.
Regards, Jim
wklee said:
Microsoft included a firewall starting with SP2 onwards. Yours is likely to be SP1 or XP without any service packs. In order to get SP3 working, you'll need SP2 installed first. You can't go from XP (no SPs) to SP3. I tried it with a 10 year old Dell desktop and it didn't work.

--
Never buy version 1.0 of anything.
Click to expand...
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Odds N' Ends album here:
http://www.pbase.com/jimh/inbox&page=all
Z album here: http://www.pbase.com/jimh/marilyn_the_car&page=all
 
Of course installing every possible update and service packs through Windows update is a fist step to improving security.

As of the firewall, as Bob said, on XP it was limited to incoming threats, which raised a lot of criticism. You might as well let it off and install another firewall to replace it.

Comodo Personal Firewall works well on Windows XP, and it's freeware.
You can download it at http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/

They added an antivirus software some time ago, but as I already had Avira Antivir installed, I chose to installe just the firewall part and keep Avira Antivir, which is a lightweight and efficient freeware antivirus.
You cant get it at http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus

Basically those two free softwares cover all my security needs on Windows XP, my laptop never got infected by anything.
 
Thanks for your input.

I also use Comodo (suite) on my desktop alongside Emsisoft anti-malware and I am pleased and secure enough to breath comfortably while on the net. I thank you for mentioning Comodo as I had not thought of that in relation to that little laptop I am setting up. BTW, Emsisoft regularly warns me of various types of cookies and other low-level stuff that Comodo never alerts on. Could be I need to look closer at my Comodo configuration.
Regards, Jim
Bionicol said:
Of course installing every possible update and service packs through Windows update is a fist step to improving security.

As of the firewall, as Bob said, on XP it was limited to incoming threats, which raised a lot of criticism. You might as well let it off and install another firewall to replace it.

Comodo Personal Firewall works well on Windows XP, and it's freeware.
You can download it at http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/

They added an antivirus software some time ago, but as I already had Avira Antivir installed, I chose to installe just the firewall part and keep Avira Antivir, which is a lightweight and efficient freeware antivirus.
You cant get it at http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus

Basically those two free softwares cover all my security needs on Windows XP, my laptop never got infected by anything.
Click to expand...
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Odds N' Ends album here:
http://www.pbase.com/jimh/inbox&page=all
Z album here: http://www.pbase.com/jimh/marilyn_the_car&page=all
 
Starting from scratch on this laptop for XP is not a Good Idea, There are a lot of drivers and Sony special SW that needs to be installed and wont be detected by the new XP installation.

Getting these is not trivial as Sony is very bad at maintaining access to the special drivers and software for old models.

So unless you have all the driver and sony software for XP on this laptop, I would definitely go the update route.
 
No, as I wrote in my first post, it is not in my control panel. Here's a screen capture of my control panel on this laptop.



I found all the SP1 updates and just one entry for an SP2 update, so I guess I will go in the direction of dnloading the SP3 updates to see if I can get the firewall set up.
Regards, Jim
Skipper494 said:
Win XP Home has its own firewall, use that and a downloadable free anti-virus. It has to be in Control Panel.
Click to expand...
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Odds N' Ends album here:
http://www.pbase.com/jimh/inbox&page=all
Z album here: http://www.pbase.com/jimh/marilyn_the_car&page=all
 
If you are running Sp2, but are not current on all the Sp2 KB update, I would fisrt go to windows update and let microsoft update SP2. Go as many times as needed until all the KBs are installed or that it proposes the sp3 update to you because it needs to be at a certain level of Sp2 updates for SP3 to be done smoothly
 
I just finished the Sp2 updates and all went well, I even got my Security center, firewall, et al back!

So far no notice to update to sp3, not sure why. Defragging right now and that after some pretty hefty discarding of a bunch of stuff, so this will take awhile.

I'll go back to the Win update site tomorrow and check for more updates, but just glad to get some semblance of security back on this little Sony.
Thanks,
Jim
scrambler2 said:
If you are running Sp2, but are not current on all the Sp2 KB update, I would fisrt go to windows update and let microsoft update SP2. Go as many times as needed until all the KBs are installed or that it proposes the sp3 update to you because it needs to be at a certain level of Sp2 updates for SP3 to be done smoothly
Click to expand...
--



Odds N' Ends album here:
http://www.pbase.com/jimh/inbox&page=all
Z album here: http://www.pbase.com/jimh/marilyn_the_car&page=all
 
There were too many alerts from the HIPS (I think) that I stopped using it. How do you find it nowadays. I also noticed the firewall and anti virus are combined now. Can they be installed separately?

--
Never buy version 1.0 of anything.
 
It will take awhile for sp3 to be proposed as it neeeds to get all the Sp2 stuff updated first. You just need to keep going back to windows update until it comes up.

You can also Install Microsoft security essential for anti Virus, It is fairly light which is nice on these old laptop.

Enjoy the laptop :)
 
Yes, you can install the firewall without installing the antivirus software (just be careful to tick/untick the right boxes during the installation process).

I don't feel there are too many alerts. At the beginning, when the firewall is "learning", there may be a lot of pop ups, but after a short while it basically dies away and it's very quiet. I only get alerts when I'm installing new software, or when I run newly installed software for the first time. You just have to tell it to remember your answer and then it's quiet again.
 
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