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I never recommend McAfee or Norton to anyone. Most computer professionals I know also would never recommend them. I used to like Trend Micro, but again, most professionals I know have already have or will migrate away from them.

Many of the suggestions here are on the mark, and I have tested most of them and run various configurations on many of my machines.

Depending upon the expertise of the end-user, I would recommend for Windows 7 users:

Novices:
Win 7 Firewall
MSE
Threatfire
Malwarebytes (for occasional manual scans)
SuperAntispyware (again for occasional manual scans)

For more sophisticated users:
Comodo Pro (Firewall product only)
Avira Anti-Virus Free edition (just have to close the daily pop-up page wanting you to upgrade to their Pro edition) or MSE (one or the other)
Threatfire
Malwarebytes (for occasional manual scans)
SuperAntispyware (again for occasional manual scans)

For Businesses with a good hardware firewall (and can’t use free products):
Windows 7 firewall
Eset NOD32 Anti-virus Business Edition

Eset NOD32 is also good solution for older PC’s because it takes less system resources, but the downside is it’s not free.

Threatfire (from PC Tools) is more of a HIPS Anti-Virus solution and does not interfere with other A/V solutions (at least, not that I’ve ever found).

Arbra

Most of the folks here gave good advice, especially about backing up before you do anything.

The only thing NOT TO DO is: after installing Win 7 in a dual boot configuration the way you want it, is to simply delete your current C: drive and expect that it will boot to Windows 7. It won’t.

Boot manager is on your current C: drive, with that partition marked as a System partition. If you delete this partition, you won’t be able to get to Windows 7.

The alternatives have already been mentioned before (namely re-install Win 7 in the C: partition, but then you lose any settings you had made previously in Win 7). I think the best alternative is: You can reconfigure Boot Manager to only boot to Windows 7, delete most of the files in the C: partition (except boot manager and associated files), shrink the existing boot Manager partition to almost nothing (using a re-partitioning product like Paragon, Easus or others), then reallocate the space formerly used in the Boot Manager partition to another existing (or new) partition.

Maybe someone else knows a way to make your Win 7 partition a system partition with it’s own boot manager so you can delete your C: partition and then boot to Windows 7, but I don’t know if it can be done or how.

Like I said, unless someone else knows how to do this, don’t delete your Boot Manager Partition….

Arbra