I’ve been using the excellent Peer Guardian program that blocks any intrusive organisations from contacting your computer in any way. These organisations include advertisers and organisations that try to stop peer to peer (P2P) file sharing.

The only problem with it is that on Vista it doesn’t work most of the time! However, there is a patch available that fixes the problem.

To install the patch, all you do is:

1. Extract the zip file into the PG directory (C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2).
2. Create a shortcut to the file pg2loader.exe by right clicking on it, then “Send To –> Desktop (as shortcut)”.
3. (Optional) Drag and drop that shortcut to the start menu directory “Startup” so the program runs when you turn on your PC.

Download Peer Guardian (Vista)
Download Patch (pg2loaderRC5.zip)