[Califuser]

Vista. I have Avast for anti-virus, and Windows Defender, which I understand includes firewall and malware protection. Does this give me reasonably complete protection?

Thanks for replies.

[lunarlander]

Windows Defender is a anti-spyware application. It does not function as a firewall. However, Windows XP and Vista both have a built in firewall.

The XP firewall does not have outbound protection, so any malware you downloaded can call home and XP's firewall won't stop it. Vista's firewall has outbound protection, but it is off by default and you have to turn it on yourself.

Windows Defender is generally thought of as not very good. There are better ones, like SuperAntiSpyware and MalwareBytes.

I would also suggest you install SiteAdvisor, it give a checkmark symbot to Googles search results for those sites it deems safe to visit. Having this is a preventative measure, which will save you time and trouble of eradicating an infection.

Be aware that signature based anti-virus programs are not perfect. They can only detect what the company has captured before. I remember one company doing a test and found that Norton detects only 60% of the viruses installed, and that was the highest scoring one.

Using an alternative browser like FireFox is also a good security measure, as FireFox doesnt support ActiveX. Add the NoScript addon and that will prevent javascript based attacks.

There is a lot more to computer security .... I'll let the others chime in.

[blitzkreig]

To be frank,
Avast can provide very good protection, I would recommend using super antispyware free edition instead of windows defender
the inbuilt firewall provided by Microsoft in windows is not very effective
So I recommend comodo free firewall