How do you turn off scripting, V.B.S., etc.?

["Michael Edwards" mje@xxxxxxxx]

                         Michael Edwards.

   I've heard various people suggest features to disable for greater security
from viruses and worms:

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[Jeff:]

>... if you use
>Outlook Express with Microsoft's "active scripting" disabled, unless you
>double click on the thing to execute it. Certainly more troublesome if you do
>that, or if Outlook Express executes it for you automatically.

[Adriano Ortile:]

>On my Explorer and Outlook Express I set the protection to be the highest
>possible, i.e. never automatically dial the phone, and every ask before
>execute scripts and other macros.
....
>a double alert asked me the permission to execute scripts and to activate the
>phone connection.

[Peter Evans:]

>Or turn VBS off, etc etc.

[Rene von Rentzell:]

>As with all the viri that have been in the news recently, this apparently only
affects you if you use Windows 9x and have scripting and active X turned on.
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   Possibly I do have all these things turned on. I wouldn't know how to turn
them off, and am totally baffled by the opaque, confusing, maze-like structure
of Windows.
   Could someone please tell me how to turn all this off, or at least make the
computer ask me for confirmation before going ahead? Do you turn them off in
Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, or Windows Settings? All these menus are so
maze-like I quite literally don't know where to look for many things and often
don't understand the meaning of many options, the way they're worded; and in a
year and a half of using Windows I have very rarely learned useful information
from the Help system or the skinny instruction book that came with it.
   (I don't know how many of the things referred to are synonyms for the same
thing, and I don't even know what any of them are; but, from the above
suggestions, I make these out as the things I should turn off: scripting; active
X; macros; VBS.)

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[Rene von Rentzell:]

>As for me, I eat them for breakfast. If a *real* virus came along, some code
that could *really* infect any innocent bystander like the flue, I would be
interested.
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   Well, I don't know about the kak worm, but certainly people have lost data
because of some of these worms and viruses. I would rather get the flu than
some of the nasty viruses, especially if I haven't backed up recently. I'm not
sure if the kak actually destroys files (it doesn't appear to, judging by what
I've read so far), but it can certainly cause inconvenience. I can think of
more appetizing things for breakfast, even if I *could* cope with viruses.

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>So far, all these virus scares seem like a big yawn.
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   I have to take them a bit more seriously than that, myself; but I'm
cautious by nature, and feel far from at ease in the whole Windows environment.
I've now reached the conclusion that I am not affected by this particular
virus - but if one can be, or one just don't know what's going on, it can be
jolly scary; I felt quite peculiar when I read that posting first informing us
of the virus, only minutes after I had read the message in question. It's only
10 hours of anxious grovelling over the entrails of my hard disk that have
assured me that I'm probably safe from this particular one. Not exactly a
picnic - but I had to do it if I was ever to trust my computer again.

             Regards,
             Michael Edwards.