[olug] OT: "Securing" a WinXP Home Edition Machine

[Robert A. Jacobs]

Gang,

	Despite my best efforts to talk some great friends into purchasing a
Mac, they purchased a Dell machine with WinXP Home Edition; thankfully,
I managed to convince them *not* to hook up to the Internet until I had
a chance to prep their machine. So...now I need some security assistance
from all of you WinXP users since I have absolutely zero experience
working with WinXP (Debian at home; Win2K at work).

	I intend to set them up with FireFox (web-browser) and Thunderbird
(email) to immediately eliminate the IE/Outlook virus injection system.
What I need to know is what I should be looking at with regards to
patches (auto-updates), recommended spyware/adware programs, etc.

	Any help is greatly appreciated.  I thought I was going to have more
time to get this information but I just found out that they got their
system today.  They are a very good friends and use this machine for
business so I intend to help them out this weekend.

-raj