Considering 90% of users use Windows 9% Mac and 1% Linux I shall focus on Windows, now we all know how buggy Windows XP is just look at the security updates you get everyday, its silly.
Normally I tell people to download Linux like Ubuntu, Kubuntu or PCLinuxOS, but we all know it’s not easy to learn another operating system.
So I shall point out some key factors in securing your windows box stopping the occasional viruses.
So lets start with basic stuff your security applications, running Microsoft’s firewall disable it and download a better one, there are a lot out their for example sygate (before taken over by Symantec), not really recommended if you are a novice user.
Instead you want to be looking at a more user friendly firewall one I like is Comodo, gives you a lot of detail on what its doing and will alert you when applications try to access the internet.
Next Anti-virus programs, one of my most preached application is Avast on access scanner this will scan all incoming and outgoing traffic from emails to P2P files and even web pages, so if a malicious active x script runs in your browser Avast will stop it in its tracks so you don’t become infected.
Its also good to run another anti virus program for example AVG free edition, if you set this up to run every month it will do you a lot of good, if anything gets through that Avast didn’t detect then this is your next chance to catch the virus before it messes up your computer.
Next basic setup of your Windows Accounts, avoiding running in your admin account, when running in an admin account you can put your whole system at risk due to the fact if you get a virus it can do what it likes as it doesn’t have restrictions.
Run as a limited user, this should stop some issues.
Run your browsers as a Guest, the guest account has a lot of limitations for example you cannot install a program you cannot access many important files and so much more restrictions, so if you accidentally visit a malicious site it will not have the chance to install a virus on your machine and if it could then it cannot do much damage due to the fact it cannot edit anything.
You can run an application as guest by finding the .exe file so for example we will find the Firefox exe just go to start and run then type in the following.
%PROGRAMFILES%\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe
This should be the location of Firefox’s executable program, you can then right click on it and select run as then select your Guest account and if it has a password type it in and hit enter.
Make sure your guest account is enabled go to control panel and user accounts.
For more info on sandboxing check this forums post