Mac users running Windows: Innoculate against spyware & virus

I hope this thread I'm going to start is appropriate to this discussion board. I have been a Mac user since 1989 and an Apple user before then. Never a Windows user.
With the new intel macs, I am now using Windows occassionally to run a program (Atlas.ti) that is only made for Windows. I'm using Parallels to rung Windows XP Pro (SP2)I have found, to my horror, that getting infected by spyware and adware is really easy on Windows machines. I rarely use the Windows side to browse but once in a while I do when I'm using Atlas.ti and mostly to sites that are reputable. Just by doing that, I've been infected with spyware that no free anti-spyware program can remove after the fact. Something called "Trojan.cm.small" or something like that. I don't have the exact name.
Because of those problems, I've had to re-create my virtual disk 3 times, each time getting smarter about how to use Windows machines. The following is my latest tip and I wanted to share it. If any of you have better tips, please post to the thread.
TIP BEGINS:
I’ve had to recreate my virtual disk at least three times, the last time being yesterday, thanks to spyware that none of the free spyware programmes could remove. They could detect it just fine but they couldn’t remove it. And get this, I rarely use Windows and hardly use it to browse on the internet but just the few minutes of browsing on the internet has caused me great problems.
What I did differently than the previous two re-installations is the following:
1. After (re)installing Windows, I immediately do Windows update and MADE SURE I did NOT browse to ANY other site. I allowed Windows to completely update itself include several restarts and multiple runs of updates.
2. After that’s done, I installed the following anti-spyware and anti-virus software. All were free except the virus software which was available free to users at my university:
a. Spybot Search & Destroy
b. Spyware Blaster
c. SpywareGuard
d. Windows Defender Beta
e. McAfee VirusScan
3. I installed these programmes one at a time and updated them and performed the appropriate setting changes before proceeding to install the remaining software.
I did a lot of research to determine which anti-spyware programmes to use and determined these were the best according to my research. You can do you own research and I think one of the best ways is to go to a reputable university’s website, type in “Spyware” and see how THEY tell their faculty and students to innoculate their computers against spyware. The sites I used were:
a. University of California, Santa Cruz
b. University of Calfiornia, Berkeley
c. Carnegie Mellon University
d. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne
I hope this tip helps Mac users. It’s only since moving to an Intel Mac did I start using Windows and I can’t believe how quickly my computer (the VM side) became infected. As I say, I had to re-install 3 times and each time I became wiser. I hope this is the last time I have to do a complete re-installation.
One last thing, after installing all those anti-spyware and anti-virus programmes, you might find that when installing your own software (in my case, Atlas.ti) might be a problem. It was for me so I ended up turning off all the anti-spyware programmes, installing Atlas.ti, then turning back on the anti-spyware programmes.
I can’t believe why the majority of computer users put up with such a crappy OS system! At least the Mac is my primary OS.

Also I really can't agree with you, when I run those
anti-spyware programs (about once a month) it usually
doesn't find ANY infections. Do you use Internet
Explorer by any chance? The infection rate with that
browser is significantly higher than with others
(Firefox, Opera, etc).
Yes, one of the problems was running Internet Explorer.
For any Mac user who is just using Windows for the first time, it is intuitive to use the built-in Internet Explorer browser, right? I mean, it should NOT be the problem of the user to determine that using Internet Explorer is a problem. But unfortunately, IE is a problem. Nevertheless, that's a backwards approach which seems a very Windows-centric way of doing things. Can't blame the user for not knowing and using Internet Explorer.
What I've resorted to now is running Internet Explorer only for Windows updates and other Microsoft websites that require it. Everything else I use Opera or Firefox.
By the way, an interesting new service from Microsoft is:
http://safety.live.com

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{quote}If the Firewall was On I would ask if you had set it up as an Exception
http://www.ralphjohnsuk.dsl.pipex.com/page12.html#_Service{quote}
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