I'm new here and wanted to download LimeWire. Everybody tells me it's filled with viruses and stuff and I just spent the last couple of hours browsing this forum before I posted and my head friggen hurts. It seems all very complicated to just protect my computer while using LW... I mainly want to use it for music, but with all the complications of searching through these forums for what precautions I should take make it hard and doesn't seem like it's worth it. But I want to badly.

Can someone tell me the basic do's and dont's for LimeWire, like blocking .wmv files and .jpg... Like what programs I should download. So far I downloaded Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-Aware, ClamWin, Privoxy and that's it.

I've gotten my computers messed up so much in the past because of things like Shareaza and etc. and had to let a family relative who has in-depth knowledge about computers reformat it a couple times and had to start from scratch redownloading/putting all my files back but the same thing happens to me. So yeah, I finally decided to be smart this time and protect my computer.

Have you read through this? It has heaps of info
WARNING: Viruses on the network you should be aware of

You need to make sure that you're using a good antivirus program (there are some good free ones - I'm using AVG at the moment), keep it updated & scan whatever you download before you open it! Limewire isn't filled with viruses, there are lots of infected files across the Gnutella network & so anyone using a Gnutella client is open to infection if they're not careful with their downloading & scanning.
Zip & exe files are often infected. You could also read this about wma files
What you should know about wma files

As Birdy said there are free good antivirus programs. Mine's is. Anyway try not to over do it with the firewalls and stuff acuse maybe lkimewire won't be able to perform correctly due to them. I have avast, Spybot search n destroy, that's it. And atleast while I've downloaded some music files I sometimes get the message FILE CORRUPTED. Do you want to continue to download? I choose No of course and go get another file. So as long as you scan before opening you'll be ok. Even when downloading video files there's a Bitzi site that helps by rating that exact file you choose to downloaded. It's rated by people who have already downloaded that exact file and it gives a lot of helpful info. Plus you have this Forum filled with people eager to help one another and as you can notice there are alot of us. No virus as long as you are careful. Okl Good day.