I would suggest those free programs also clearing out your temporary files update anti virus definitions, use firefox etc. But really your system is going to be extreamly vunrable until next tusday the 10th because of the WMF vunrability. read more http://www.f-secure.com/zero-day. I installed the unofficial patch that you can get at http://www.grc.com/default.htm.

But here is a good thread on general computer managment http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.ph...ic=289948&st=0

also in some cases when the computer is completly hosed I would suggest a reformat and reinstall of the Operating System, mostly for your own sanity and also some really nasty things can get installed onto your computer (rootkits, keyloggers etc.). In the case of rootkits a reinstall is the only way your going to be able to be sure that it was is removed. I would suggest using a program called RootkitRevealer from http://sysinternals.com. And I personally don't run windows xp with admin privledges, none of the software I use on a daily basis requires admin privledges and for the things that do the RunAs command works pretty good.