Yup. And here's a link for tweaking "services". You really need a good reason to run MS defaults; Just because MS thinks so isn't one of those reasons. http://smallvoid.com/tweak/winnt/services.html
A few years back I wrote a basic manual for investors. It's free just drop a email address at spywareadvisor@hotmail and I will send it to you, It's basic but better than most. I call the nasty guys gremlinware (tm) I have had geeks review it and they liked. Right; no Tech support is available. I wish you well TJ...
It's actually "Google Pack" that includes 6 months of "free Norton AV"... http://pack.google.com/about.html By then Norton will have invaded and taken over every single proximate nook, cranny, and orfice... And will be virtually uninstallable... So many will end up paying through the nose for life. My beef with Norton is that they do not respect your property... They treat your computer as if it now belongs to them. My beef with Google is that the Norton deal... Blows away any pretense to "higher morality" and betrays their "philosophies". It's all about one thing now... $$$. And Firefox is waaaay superior than IE in terms of security... Both by design... And because hackers have had many years to target IE and Windows... The softest targets of all time. The entire virus industry was created by abject negligence on the part of MSFT.
I have 5 Dells on a network... With an old basic Linsys router and cable broadband with static IP... Of which 3 are fast, modded, front line Dells... That work hard all day to help me do 150 trades. I run 20-30 software programs... Many custom coded between 1990s and yesterday... So I can't have port blocking firewall overkill. A quick look at Avast in the Task Manager... It appears to use about 5 minutes of CPU/day. If, in theory, I decided to surf dangerous areas of the web like hacker or porn sites... Than I would use a secondary computer. Over 3 years I have seen maybe 20 viruses... And 100% on XP were killed dead by Avast. And free Sygate Firewall works ** great **, too. End of analysis. Keep things as simple as possible. There is no security problem on my network. On to 100 more important things to do.
Is it still possible (since sygate has been acquired by symantec) to use sygate free version for unlimited time without registering or does it stop functioning after a limited period. Actually I shifted from Norton firewall to sygate a few days back and found sygate great.
It will work for unlimited time. I had it for some months and its ok but now I ¡m using comodo firewall. It¢s a little more annoying than sygate until you set the rules but imo it¢s the best firewall.