So, bottom line, if you were me, I gather you'd continue with a third-party firewall, and not just rely on the router and the Windows XP built-in firewall. The AV goes without saying.Quote from j_medved:
I was using AV, but not the software firewall at the time. The features of the software firewall would not prevent the malicious code from compromising your system. It could prevent the malicious code from communicating with the outside world though, which it would need to do spread, or to send out info it gathers (passwords, etc) or spam.
Quote from Gabfly1:
So, bottom line, if you were me, I gather you'd continue with a third-party firewall, and not just rely on the router and the Windows XP built-in firewall. The AV goes without saying.