[Thinkpad] OT: Cleaning up a home network

[David Ross]

> A friend of mine asked me to come look at his home network. He has a
> cable connection coming into a desktop machine and then wireless
> connections from there. He said the gateway desktop runs very slowly.

This is a stiff load for a desktop, especially one running windows, and
especially if some of the wireless users are running software with
activity on many ports.  Good wireless routers are cheap nowadays!

> He say that he runs Spysweeper, which I know nothing about,
religiously.
> I plan to take a cd with SpyBot Search and Destroy as well as
Ad-aware.

AVG has a nice anti-spyware program (formerly Ewido) as well.

> What I don't have is a tool to allow me to easily identify what
programs
> Task Manager says are running.

sysinternals.com has a freebie called "Process Explorer" which gives
much more information than the task manager.  I recommend it highly.

David R.