Microsoft used to think it will be secure if you take care of personal firewall,auto update and anti virus. :-) So they have these three categories in their security center. Microsoft can now provide personal firewall and auto update built into the windows distribution and left the space a little bit for those anti virus vendors. Microsoft also provide anti spyware tool which is now called "Windows Defender". The newer formal release of Windows Defender is to come but the beta version shows some comfort for me. It's basically the old anti spyware plus a software explorer. The software explorer can show Startup programs, Currently running programs, Network-connected programs and Winsock service providers. It's handy to put them together and you can remove/disable the unwanted items or end processes.
When I did my check with Windows Denfender, I noticed the VNC program is still listenning over port 5800 and 5900 from the Network-connected programs category. I thought it shouldn't be there as I always turn off the little TightVNC icon show up in system tray. So I launched the service manager and found the VNC service was there up and running. I had run a VA scanner against this pc before but didn't find these ports as my windows firewall silently dropped the incoming request. But there will be problem definitely if I happen to turn the firewall off. So I turned it off and disabled the service to make sure it will no longer startup by itself. This is a good example that a handy tool can help you busy techies.
Overall, it's nice to have Windows Defender. Plus the three categories in security center, you should have pretty good coverage for Windows XP security.
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