I'm only going to respond to your non-router questions as I think you should have enough info in those other posts to make a choice. First, when your new computer is set up, plug in the new external drive to make sure it's recognized as part of that new system. It may have backup software already on it, so you could make a backup copy of your new system onto the external drive as your first step. Then, before you transfer any of the photo files, etc., to your new system, you could download and run Malwarebytes on the old computer as a precaution. Once you are sure your old system is clean, you can do your file transfer. Since you can't get your external hard drive recognized with your old computer, you'll have to do something else. If it were me, I'd get a flash drive of 4GB or larger (you can get an 8 GB drive on Amazon for less than $20). Then COPY as big a chunk as possible of those files onto the flash drive (DON'T cut and paste, as you want to leave a backup on your old computer at least until the whole transfer process is done correctly); then plug the flash drive into the new computer and copy the first batch of files to your new computer's hard drive. Then plug the flash drive back in to the old computer, delete all the files on the flash drive only, and reload it with a new chunk of files. Then load these on the new computer. Repeat until they are all loaded on to the new computer. Then, when you've transferred everything, you can copy all of them from the hard drive of the new computer to the external hard drive, which will then be your insurance policy. Second, if you have a 15 month subscription to McAfee, why complicate things? Keep it and run it. You can worry about replacing it with something else like Avast in 15 months. Just supplement it with Malwarebytes, but don't try to run another antivirus program like Avast at the same time. Also, having a router is a different issue from what ZoneAlarm software does for you. If you are running McAfee with its firewall, and occasionally running Malwarebytes, you should be fine. Also, because your knowledge of computers appears somewhat basic, ZoneAlarm may be a little sophisticated for you to make sure you are running it correctly. (I'm not trying to insult you, just trying to keep you adequately protected without making it unnecessarily complicated for you.

This sounds like your problem: Here is a link that might be useful: Forum

How are you sure it is Itunes that is removing your music? I have an older computer with XP that does have Itunes and I have never lost any music on it. I also have a two month old laptop with Vista that never has had Itunes installed. I ripped 2 CD's with music a few days ago on the laptop. The music was OK for a couple days and now all that is there is the folders where the music was. When I open them, there is no music in them. Both computers have CCleaner and I use it daily to keep things running better.

If you've purchased any music or movies that are protected, make sure you deauthorize your computer (under Store in the menu). I think Itunes now sells music unprotected (not sure about movies). In the past, the files were protected and you could copy them to a certain number of ipods and a certain number of computers. If you change computers too many times without deauthorizing, you won't be able to play them on the new computer.