Expert: Keith Davis - 9/2/2010

Question
hi keith,
 i was reformatting my pc last night, or at least trying to (had to use a "system recovery" disc for vista).  by the way, is system recovery the same as reformat, because the disc only has either a system restore option or system recovery option to return to factory settings? and it never asked me what partition to use, too, weird.  i'd call hp but my warranty expired.  but anyway, when i had finally completed the recovery and turned on the firewall i went online to get updates and norton updates too.  now my official question, is being online with the windows firewall turned on dangerous; can i get viruses just by being online, without visiting any websites?  thank you!  

Answer
Windows has improved it's firewall but that is not to say it is impenetrable. Is there a typo in your question? I really don't understand why you ask "is being online with the windows firewall turned on dangerous"? Do you mean without your other updates (norton, etc.) and just the firewall?
The safest way is to download the programs on another computer and transfer the setup files to yours via USB drive or disk.