Tirnanog

Been out teaching so late reply. Being a philosophy / Theology research / student I am quite a patient soul it takes a great deal to make me mad and I would have no idea where to get or run an illegal program even if you wanted me to.

I have nothing illegal on the computer at all XP has been activated as has Office 2003 . My student version has excel / power point/ word.

Are you running anything microsoft thats normally a part of a microsoft office package but not the student/teacher version? For example, frontpage, publisher, access?

I do not use any of those you mention but I am running OneNote it it was a cheap offer that came with the package and that does the same thing occasionally.

I use Thunderbird and Firefox / Mailwasher/ Nod / Online Armour, / Spyware Terminator Spyware Blaster / Spyware Guard and am behind a router. I have P Shop Pro 7 and Paper port / Ph D programs and a couple of dictionaries and various utilities nothing else from Microsoft at all

I have one old and one young computer friend who has an MSc in computing and is also a Linux buff who has taught me all I know in the form of installing and setting up the computer myself otherwise it would cost me a fortune but I have to call him out for hardware issues – most of the time I can sort myself out. Microsoft's Windows Update appears buggy, and I've often had a lot of trouble getting the Windows PCs at home updated successfully

Having installed SP2 they said use the ‘The Software Patch’ site for any further updates and download them. I am not a geek and what Microsoft offers makes no sense to me whatsoever and they are all Windows service packs & updates for Windows XP and Windows Vista direct from Microsoft but the machine does not have to have WGA installed and is not probed by Microsoft so I have added most of 2005 – 2007 updates but not service pack 3