I'm temporarily using my dad's laptop. And I'm not sure if firewall is enabled or not. I clicked Control Panel/System and Security/Windows Firewall. But I guess I can't enable it. Windows Firewall window looks like this:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/207/firewallu.png/ - I cannot click most of the options.
I translated and searched it in google and found this message: "These settings are being managed by vendor application McAfee Personal Firewall"
Because of that "'!" message, I though McAfee Personal Firewall was enabled, thats why it didn't allow me to change to Windows Firewall. But I clicked Control Panel/System and Security/Solution Center, and there was a warning that says no firewall is enabled. I clicked the warning, there was three options; "Enable Windows Firewall", "Show me firewalls in this computer" and "Get another firewall". When I clicked on "Show me firewalls in this computer", it showed Lavasoft Ad-Aware, McAfee and Windows firewalls as installed firewalls. And all of them were "Disabled/Closed". I selected Windows Firewall and clicked "Open/Enable", nothing happened. I selected McAfee Personal Firewall and clicked "Open/Enable" and there was a warning that I need to activate McAfee in order to enable its firewall. I clicked activate and registered(just name, email and password) and now McAfee works. I'm kinda confused though, because I was trying to enable McAfee before and it wasn't working. I thought someone downloaded it's trial and trial date has expired, that's why I couldn't activate it. But looks like I was wrong. I googled the message above and I think McAfee Firewall comes with Windows 7. So did I activated free trial? I'm sure we did not buy McAfee(and definitely did not download it from web).
Anyways, looks like there's no problem with McAfee Firewall. I guess it's working now but I'm not sure, how can I see which firewall is enabled? And I still can't control Windows Firewall section.
If it's trial version is it ok if I delete McAfee Firewall? Because it won't be working(after date expires) anyway and it doesn't allow me to control Windows Firewall.
We're using the laptop at home right now. But my dad was taking it to the school a few months ago. I think that one of the kids may downloaded some keylogger or something like that. How can I be sure about it? I'm gonna scan the laptop with an anti-virus program and an anti-malware program-I guess both are different things- but if I don't find anything, does it mean the laptop is clean? I know there are some legal monitoring programs, so I wonder if they are counted as "spyware" or not? I mean can anti-virus/malware detect them? How can I know if there's a legal program downloaded in the computer or not?
The laptop is kinda slow. Sometimes, it takes 20 seconds to open Firefox. When I use HP I click Firefox and it opens up immediately, even though we bought HP four years ago, also, there's not much free space in HP. We're not really doing anything else than surfing on web, writing on Microsoft Word, Notepad etc. while using Acer. Most of the time there's no programs running other than Ad-Aware, McAfee, a Notepad and a VPN program. I'm not counting startup programs though... So, I wonder what causes the slowness?
The laptop is Acer Aspire One 753, Windows 7 Home Premium, Intel Celeron CPU 1.07 GHz, 2.00 RAM, 64 bit, 99 GB free space. Not sure if that info is necessary or not..
My questions about network are kinda bit weird. Sorry for that. But I'm really confused about networks.
How can I see how many computers using the network I'm connected to?
Is it possible that someone can use my laptop's connection? I'm not asking the network, I'm asking the connection. Ok, I can't even explain what I'm trying to say. But I had to ask it . Just skip that...
If this laptop is connected to a network, like office network or school network or something, and if there's an admin computer which can monitor all the traffic going through this laptop, how can I understand it? Can Malwarebytes or that kind of anti-virus, anti-malware programs detect it? I'm asking this because perhaps my laptop is being monitored this way but I'm not seeing it because its legal? So, how can I know it? If someone adjusted the settings of this computer [to make the computer available for an admin computer to see/monitor it], which settings did he/she changed, where do I have to look to see changed settings?
A few months ago, I was checking my dad's mails. I downloaded an attachment. But the attachment showed up on my sister's laptop. I have no idea how it did happen. It never happened since then. But I still want to find out how it happened. I guess we adjusted the network settings kinda wrong because we connected the laptop(dad's) to the network(home network) just before that happened. But I don't know anything about the settings, so I'm not sure...
Sorry I wrote too long. And I might repeated some questions. But I wanted to describe my problems as best as I can. There must be some grammatical errors, if you don't understand anything please tell me.
Search 
.
