As the title says.
I'm new to this (late starter) so will appreciate suggestion, tips etc.

 

As you said Sandboxie, Comodo Firewall has its own sandbox, or the most powerful (unless you require reboot for tested installed programs) Shadow defender.

Awaiting other suggestions, I'm curious too.

 

@Dalmation, I'd also like to suggest another strategy: Please make a complete backup of your C:/ drive using good backup software. The backup software will allow you to create an emergency disk, which you can use to completely restore your C:/ system in case of malware, a frozen screen, a Trojan infection, etc.

In 30 years, I've had about 4-5 viruses, two instances of a frozen screen, and one polyphonic virus that ate files. With the backup, I was able to completely restore my system within 1.5 hours using the emergency disk. I've never had a virus infection from the sister site. All downloads were clean; it would be pretty stupid if crackers and uploaders were to ruin their business model with viruses and Trojans.

Dubious websites are a completely different story. You can get infected as soon as you visit them and catch a boot-resistant trojan, which you can delete, but it will reappear the next time you boot up. Furthermore, new viruses and trojans are not detected by antivirus software. In addition, cybercrime is a huge business with high growth rates. Users often have weak passwords, carelessly open file attachments, and frequent porn and other illegal websites.

If you download from a source other than our sister site, Sanboxie is a good precaution because if you unpack and run it in the closed container, nothing can escape from the container.