I am running XP. For protection I use Ewido, CounterSpy and AVG. Ewido saved me one time when I had a lot of viruses. (Went to their website after I was infected and scanned my computer and it cleaned it all up, then I installed it) All these programs are free.
Thanks so much for the info, I will print out this thread and do some reading.
I knew I'd get help here. Very appreciative of it, believe me.
Rick