I don't know how to keep safe!

[markjones05]

I am getting a new macpro come friday and plan on using bootcamp to install windows xp on a seperate hard drive. The thing is I have been using macs for so long I have no idea how to keep a windows machine safe from spyware, viruses and the like. Can anyone tell me what the must haves are in order to keep my machine safe? Is it possible for a virus to spread from my windows installed hard drive to my osx hard drive?

 

[Osarkon]

You're going to need a firewall, (although xp has one built-in, it only monitors traffic one way), a trusty antirivirus (I recommend AVG, it's free and works fine), an anti-spyware program (ad-aware and spybot will do), and common sense

Viruses can in theory get onto your mac partition, but they can't do anything because they won't work on a mac!

 

[yellow]

I didn't think you COULD install Windows XP on a USB drive and boot your using it/BootCamp.
I'm almost positive that you can't do it on a firewire drive.

Is it possible for a virus to spread from my windows installed hard drive to my osx hard drive?

Pretty much no. Windows cannot see/read/write to HFS+, so no virus (unless VERY specially crafted) can effect your OS X install.
Someday.. but not now and unlikely in the near future.

 

[apfhex]

(although xp has one built-in, it only monitors traffic one way)

And which was is that? I know it monitors outgoing traffic and it would be pretty useless as a firewall if it didn't monitor incoming traffic, so...

 

[ruutiveijari]

And which was is that? I know it monitors outgoing traffic and it would be pretty useless as a firewall if it didn't monitor incoming traffic, so...

It monitors both ways of course.

 

[Ladybug]

In addition to the other suggestions, you might want to give Spyware Guard and Spyware Blaster a look, I've had good results with these... Also, use Firefox or some other browser besides Internet Explorer.

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/products.html