Windows XP Service Pack 2 includes a feature called Security Centre, which provides monitoring of system security. As such, the Security Centre will notify you should the Firewall, Automatic Updates and/or Virus Protection be disabled on the computer. But, if you have intentionally disabled one of these features, the Security Centre alerts can become annoying (for example, if you have disabled Automatic Updates because you prefer to manually update Windows). However, these alerts can be disabled. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type ‘regedit’ (without the quotes) and click OK. Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftSecurity Center. In the right-hand pane you will see the following DWORD values: AntiVirusDisableNotify, FirewallDisableNotify, and UpdatesDisableNotify. To disable the alerts for any of these features, right-click on the relevant entry and select ‘Modify’. To disable the alert, set the Value Data to 1. To enable the alert, set the Value Data to 0. You will need to restart the computer for the changes to take effect.