and I won't be going to any such sites.
I know nothing about Win7.
Back in the day, the average online time to infection was something like 5 minutes unless you had enabled the firewall. So, the steps would possibly be to install, enable the firewall, perform updates, add AV software, install a different browser, and probably consider installing a third-party software firewall.
Also, you had to disable something... I forget the exact name, but it was a service that let you get messages over the network. That had an exploit that let people compromise your machine as quickly as they could find it by scanning the public IP space for vulnerable devices.
Messenger Service, maybe? This was a long time ago.
If you installed from the disk with SP1 included, it wasn't as much of a problem. That included an update that closed that hole in the system.
Just because your device doesn't contain any critical information doesn't mean it's not a vector to other devices on your network and, perhaps more importantly, you could still become a part of a botnet, a spam relay, or a dump (which is when they use your computer to store files, often files of questionable legality).
Of those, I'd be more concerned with being part of a botnet or a spam relay.
I have no idea if Win7 is anything like XP in those regards. Given how long it has gone without support, I would not be even a little surprised if it was trivial to compromise it. People still use it, so it probably remains a juicy enough target for malware authors.
