First thing first .. that you should have to do to keep your compute clean avoid downloading any program or application which are not genuine, According to my past experiences when i was a newbie to computer i just keep on downloading any application, an executable file. not knowing that it contains something like virus, malware, spywate, etc. that could harm or damage my computer...
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Norton Antivirus is also slow as hell and gobbles up all your resources when it scans and updates.
Get Kaspersky, NOD32 or AVG instead.
As a rule of thumb, Viruses cannot reside in pictures, movie clips or sound files, however some viruses can be sent through the Windows Media player Licensing system.
other things you can do, is being wary of any mails from people you don't know or expect mails from. Sometimes virus-infested mails CAN come prom friends or colleagues too. If you get such a mail, be sure the attachments are not .exe, .vbs or have an extension that you are not familliar with.
file extentions that are safe:
1. Music: .mp3, .wav. ogg or similar
2. Pictures: .jpg, .tiff, .bmp, .gif etc.
3. Movie clips: .avi, .mpg, .mkv, .ogg, .flv, etc.
4. raw text files: .txt, .rtf
potentially unsafe file extensions:
.exe, .com, .vbs, .rar, .zip etc.
the unsafe ones are a good idea to scan with the AV program first or just after you downloaded them.
Some pages also send a virus to your computer as soon as you visit the page (or view the mail. So make sure to scan your computer regularly and keep your virus definitions up to date.
Tutorials on How to keep your computer clean
