Anti-virus/firewall suggestions...

[Mikanele]

My post was saying that my original post in this thread related to winxp as that is what I use. I should have worded differently. I don't have experience or advice for vista or win 7 as I've never used either.

[Hicha]

Another thing to keep in mind is to always keep your system up-to-date. Microsoft releases detected bugs, software exploits, and vulnerabilities as well as applicable fixes/patches for said exploits every Tuesday. This also means that hackers are basically provided the backdoor information on Tuesday as well so they can start developing attacks and malware to take advantage of systems that haven't been patched yet.

People often get annoyed when companies like Microsoft, Mozilla and Adobe patch often, but there's a reason behind it, and usually that's to protect you.