Suggestions

Make sure to have an antivirus program (more than one is better). This is the main thing you have to do to grant a minimum security level in your system.
Make a boot floppy disk.
Make periodical backups of more important data and programs. In case of viral infections (or just in case of accidental damage or loss of data) you will be able to restore original situation.
Absolutely avoid leaving a floppy disk inside of turned off PC's drive. Once turned on, your PC will look for the first floppy's sector, and, in case of an infected disk, the virus will run.
Scan each file you download, load from floppies or Cds with an antivirus program. Sometimes people got virus by floppies or Cds given with magazines!
Often people undervalue possible viral infections by e-mail, in that one thinks that e-mails can't run like programs: therefore an e-mail can't infect one's own system... Well, that is absolutely true, but you have not to forget that e-mails can include attachments, that's possible executable files. Besides everyone can send you - by e-mails - apparently inoffensive files, such as Word or Excel documents. Therefore, files '.doc' can be dangerous. These files don't run, but they can activate viral macros when you try to read them. On Windows 95 it's really easy to click 2 times on a file...So my suggestion is: you have to read never '.doc' file by means of Word; just use an other text editor which don't use macro languages, such as Notepad for example. Another suggestion: disable automatic macros' execution.
Disable 'Java' and 'Javascript' in your favourite web browser. Java is much more safe than Javascript, in that, for instance, all dangerous statements were eliminated, but there are several ways to overcome this restriction. So: making a window is a permitted action, in fact Java allows that. But you could meet a Java applet which...well it just wants to open thousands of windows...Javascript on the contrary is more dangerous than Java (it was developed by Netscape, it has nothing to do with Java - developed by Sun - and it hasn't all Java's restrictions). Both, Java and Javascript are independent of platforms, in other words, they can run on all systems. Allow Java and Javascript execution only on safe sites (Altavista for example has built a good interface to refine searches by means of Java. If you disable Java here, you can't use these options). The same is true for ActiveX. Visit this site: http://www.math.gatech.edu/~mladue/HostileApplets.html (Warning: as you can see by URL, this site contains hostile applets)
Beware of exchange of files during chat sessions.
Update periodically the antivirus' database. On the contrary, with the passing of time the antivirus program become less and less effective, until its action will be helpful at all.
When you detect an infection, ask to an expert to remove it. Although many antiviruses have a 'wizard' to help beginners, a bad use of it can cause irreparable damages.

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