Belarc Security Advisor - XP sp3

I have always run a tight ship when it comes to security on my home PC; ensuring everythnig is up-to-date. Security fixes, anti virus, firewalls and other protection types and to be fare, in almost 30 years of PC use I have never been subject to a virus or any other attack.

However, one day last week I was curious to see how my aging XP machine fared against the benchmark set by Belarc and thus installed their security advisor software to run some tests (after researching the company first).

I got my results back and ... well I was devastated to say the least. I had a score of only 3.96 out of 10. I have now spent the last 4 days checking, researching and trying to act upon their recommendations and my scan from 15 minutes ago showed 8.3 out of 10. I really feel like tearing my hair out now. I would like to know if anyone who uses xp pro - sp3 who has tried belarc has managed to obtain a score of 10 out of 10. even a 9.5 out of 10. is this possible with this type of OS?

I don't want to know how to do anythnig, just if it is possible

I'm always very sceptical of such programs. Where exactly did your system supposedly fall over?

I have read somewhere that belarc adviser has been responsible for software license keys being posted on the net as unsuspecting peeps where not aware that it was uploading the details, so i would be cautious about using it, make sure you have a good firewall

I've always scored 2.5/10 on XP Pro SP3 and never worried about it. I think Belarc Security Advisor is too stringent; you only need to have a FAT Recovery Partition to be marked down (by 0.63) and that's just one instance.

EDIT: I mainly use it to check the up-to-dateness of Security Updates and Hotfixes, and Software Versions.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Fri 23-Apr-10 01:47:58)

Ensure ICMP Routing via Shortest Path First

Replace a Process Level Token

Various registry permissions

Bypass Traverse Checking

1 is pretty much nonsensical
2, 3 and 4 are probably related and I would imagine that just about every home system would fail these.

For the home user, it's paranoia inducing nonsense.