Every Computer Needs Anti Virus Software

There are a few things in life that everyone simply needs. I’l be the first to agree that we use the word “need” far too often when really we are probably wanting something rather than truly needing it. I believe strongly that everyone needs clean water, adequate food, proper medical care and a safe place to live and sleep. I will not say, however, that everyone in the world needs to drive an expensive sports car or go on vacation four times a year. As an internet design specialist, I must say that everyone who owns a computer must have anti virus software.

There is no question about it: anti virus software is a must for an internet using computer in the world. Why? Simply put, because far too many people have taken pleasure in or made a job out of messing up the security of the internet. Far too many people think that placing a virus over the internet that will effectively destroy many computers and programs is a comical thing. And this is why anti virus software is a must for all computer owners.

Anti virus software exists to combat the evil people who are at work to bring a nasty virus to your computer. A virus can come through a variety of ways and many that are seemingly innocent and unsuspecting. So anti virus software must work very hard to bring the level of protection that is necessary to personal and public computers of all kinds.

If you are unsure about where or how to get the right anti virus software for you, then talk with a friend who knows about computers or visit a store that specializes in computers and internet security. Talk through your options and do a little research to see exactly what you’re getting for any kind of anti virus software. Make sure you choose anti virus software that will be effective in destroying the things you need destroyed.

You will never be fully safe to browse the internet or to use a computer until it is protected by strong anti virus software. So take some time, use some money and get your computer protected by good anti virus software. You will not see any effects of the software on your computer. Keep in mind that this is exactly the point: your anti virus software will keep you from having any problems or disfunctions with your computer and you’ll be able to get back to work or to play hassle free on the computer.

Shortcut Virus Infection

So far, the “shortcut” virus infection in thumb drive is the most famous problem I had faced in my workplace. When this virus infect your thumb drive, it will hide your files and then create the shortcut icons that represent the files being hide. Look the picture below to ease your understanding about what I am talking about

 


Solution

1. First of all, you must update an antivirus program in your computer until it get the latest definition update’s files.
   
2. Next, impale your thumb drive into your computer’s USB port –-> scan it using the updated antivirus program –-> delete any infected files detected by the program  
   
   
   
3. Double click your thumb drive’s icon to open its contents –-> delete all shortcut icons that represent the files being hide.
   
   Note: In order to ease you to delete the icons, you can sort the contents of your thumb drive based on group. Look the picture below
   
    
   
4. Press   to open the Run dialog box --> type cmd  –-> click OK to open Windows command-line interface.
   
5. On Windows command-line interface type the command below to unhide the hidden files: 
   
   
   
   <USB thumb drive letter> Drive g: for example. No need to put a backslash after double colon (:). Check your USB thumb drive letter in My Computer.
   
6. Press --> wait untill you see the default directory of your cmd program.
   
   
7. Now, double click to open your thumb drive’s in My Computer –-> delete the files produced by shortcut virus.
    
    

What is Worm, Trojan and Horse?

The most common blunder people make when the topic of a computer virus arises is to refer to a worm or Trojan horse as a virus. While the words Trojan, worm and virus are often used interchangeably, they are not exactly the same. Viruses, worms and Trojan Horses are all malicious programs that can cause damage to your computer, but there are differences among the three, and knowing those differences can help you to better protect your computer from their often damaging effects.

Virus:
A computer virus attaches itself to a program or file enabling it to spread from one computer to another, leaving infections as it travels. Like a human virus, a computer virus can range in severity: some may cause only mildly annoying effects while others can damage your hardware, software or files. Almost all viruses are attached to an executable file, which means the virus may exist on your computer but it actually cannot infect your computer unless you run or open the malicious program. It is important to note that a virus cannot be spread without a human action, (such as running an infected program) to keep it going. People continue the spread of a computer virus, mostly unknowingly, by sharing infecting files or sending e-mails with viruses as attachments in the e-mail.

Worm:

A worm is similar to a virus by design and is considered to be a sub-class of a virus. Worms spread from computer to computer, but unlike a virus, it has the capability to travel without any human action. A worm takes advantage of file or information transport features on your system, which is what allows it to travel unaided. The biggest danger with a worm is its capability to replicate itself on your system, so rather than your computer sending out a single worm, it could send out hundreds or thousands of copies of itself, creating a huge devastating effect. One example would be for a worm to send a copy of itself to everyone listed in your e-mail address book. Then, the worm replicates and sends itself out to everyone listed in each of the receiver's address book, and the manifest continues on down the line. Due to the copying nature of a worm and its capability to travel across networks the end result in most cases is that the worm consumes too much system memory (or network bandwidth), causing Web servers, network servers and individual computers to stop responding. In recent worm attacks such as the much-talked-about Blaster Worm, the worm has been designed to tunnel into your system and allow malicious users to control your computer remotely.

Trojan Horse:

A Trojan Horse is full of as much trickery as the mythological Trojan Horse it was named after. The Trojan Horse, at first glance will appear to be useful software but will actually do damage once installed or run on your computer. Those on the receiving end of a Trojan Horse are usually tricked into opening them because they appear to be receiving legitimate software or files from a legitimate source. When a Trojan is activated on your computer, the results can vary. Some Trojans are designed to be more annoying than malicious (like changing your desktop, adding silly active desktop icons) or they can cause serious damage by deleting files and destroying information on your system. Trojans are also known to create a backdoor on your computer that gives malicious users access to your system, possibly allowing confidential or personal information to be compromised. Unlike viruses and worms, Trojans do not reproduce by infecting other files nor do they self-replicate.

What is a Computer Virus ?

In my Previous article I explained about malware .In todays post i will be explaining about Computer Virus which is a type of malware

A computer virus is a program which reproduces itself. It may attach to other programs, it may create copies of itself (as in companion viruses). It may damage or corrupt data, change data, or degrade the performance of your system by utilizing resources such as memory or disk space.

There are thousands of viruses, and new ones are discovered every day. It is difficult to come up with a generic explanation of how viruses work, since they all have variations in the way they infect or the way they spread. So instead, we'll take some broad categories that are commonly used to describe various types of virus.

File Viruses (Parasitic Viruses):-

File viruses are pieces of code that attach themselves to executable files, driver files or compressed files, and are activated when the host program is run. After activation, the virus may spread itself by attaching itself to other programs in the system, and also carry out the malevolent activity it was programmed for. Most file viruses spread by loading themselves in system memory and looking for any other programs located on the drive. If it finds one, it modifies the program's code so that it contains and activates the virus the next time it's run. It keeps doing this over and over until it spreads across the system, and possibly to other systems that the infected program may be shared with. Besides spreading themselves, these viruses also carry some type of destructive constituent that can be activated immediately or by a particular 'trigger'. The trigger could be a specific date, or the number of times the virus has been replicated, or anything equally trivial. Some examples of file viruses are Randex, Meve and MrKlunky.

Boot Sector Viruses:-

A boot sector virus affects the boot sector of a hard disk, which is a very crucial part. The boot sector is where all information about the drive is stored, along with a program that makes it possible for the operating system to boot up. By inserting its code into the boot sector, a virus guarantees that it loads into memory during every boot sequence.


Multipartite Viruses:-

Multipartite viruses are a combination of boot sector viruses and file viruses. These viruses come in through infected media and reside in memory. They then move on to the boot sector of the hard drive. From there, the virus infects executable files on the hard drive and spreads across the system. There aren't too many multipartite viruses in existence today, but in their heyday, they accounted for some major problems due to their capacity to combine different infection techniques. A significantly famous multipartite virus is Ywinz.

Macro Viruses:-

Macro viruses infect files that are created using certain applications or programs that contain macros. These include Microsoft Office documents such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Access databases, and other similar application files such as Corel Draw, AmiPro, etc. Since macro viruses are written in the language of the application, and not in that of the operating system, they are known to be platform-independent they can spread between Windows, Mac, and any other system, so long as they're running the required application. With the ever-increasing capabilities of macro languages in applications, and the possibility of infections spreading over networks, these viruses are major threats.

The first macro virus was written for Microsoft Word and was discovered back in August 1995. Today, there are thousands of macro viruses in existence-some examples are Relax, Melissa.A and Bablas.

Network Viruses:-

This kind of virus is proficient in quickly spreading across a Local Area Network (LAN) or even over the Internet. Usually, it propagates through shared resources, such as shared drives and folders. Once it infects a new system, it searches for potential targets by searching the network for other vulnerable systems. Once a new vulnerable system is found, the network virus infects the other system, and thus spreads over the network. Some of the most notorious network viruses are Nimda and SQLSlammer.

E-mail Viruses:-

An e-mail virus could be a form of a macro virus that spreads itself to all the contacts located in the host's email address book. If any of the e-mail recipients open the attachment of the infected mail, it spreads to the new host's address book contacts, and then proceeds to send itself to all those contacts as well. These days, e-mail viruses can infect hosts even if the infected e-mail is previewed in a mail client. One of the most common and destructive e-mail viruses is the ILOVEYOU virus.

There are many ways in which a virus can infect or stay dormant on your PC. However, whether active or dormant, it's dangerous to let one loose on your system, and should be dealt with immediately.

Computer Viruses (what is good)

"The Internet is a totally connected infrastructure," said Steve Trilling, senior director of research at Symantec. "That means we're only as strong as the weakest link." If every computer user simply protected his or her own laptop or PC, Trilling said, virus and worm writers would have to pursue another form of entertainment.

Ahhh-choo! Ahh, lucky you. Every time you are exposed to a virus, your immune system builds resistance to that particular bug. So, why can't we build computers that do the same thing?

"If our bodies functioned like computers, we'd be extinct," said Steve Hofmeyr, founder and chief scientist of Sana Security. "The body is a dynamic place that profits from changes," he told TechNewsWorld. "Our immune systems adapt with us from birth to puberty and through the aging process."
Perhaps the promise of biological computing is that our machines will grow up, rather than grow obsolete. But while it's easy to draw analogies between how the human immune system works and how virus protection software programs should work, mimicking nature is no simple task.

Designing Survivability

According to David Evans, professor of computer science at the University of Virginia, we may not be able to develop computer programs that mimic biology exactly, but we can learn techniques from biology that enable us to build more scalable and robust systems. Several of Evans' projects are supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) grants.

"Our goal is to produce complex, predictable behavior from a large number of unreliable components," he said. Someday, Evans added, our computers could manage to remain up and running even as new viruses spread, "...the same way an organism survives even when its cells fail and its environment changes."
He noted that we can learn from studying other natural defense mechanisms, such as decentralization and diversity. "Immune systems are part of the solution, but not all of it -- neither in computer systems nor in nature," Evans explained. "The success of the immune system relies on organisms continuing to function even after a few cells are infected, so the body has time to produce enough antibodies to react," he told TechNewsWorld.
"I think the future of computing will depend on both directions of research -- changing the way systems are built to make them intrinsically less vulnerable, and developing immune systems for mitigating attacks," Evans said.

Bad Bugs Teach Good Habits

Unfortunately, the environment in which our computers live -- that is, the world of the Internet -- is increasingly hostile. Every new virus and worm seems to spread more quickly than the last. And we have ourselves to blame.
"The Internet is a totally connected infrastructure," said Steve Trilling, senior director of research at Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC). "That means we're only as strong as the weakest link." If every computer user simply protected his or her own laptop or PC, Trilling said, virus and worm writers would have to pursue another form of entertainment.
On the bright side, a computer user who suffers the effects of a virus typically responds like the heart-attack survivor who, overnight, adopts healthy habits. Each time a new virus is reported, we download patches and upgrade security systems in droves. After the SoBig attack last fall, hundreds of thousands of computer users updated software, installed virus protection and reconfigured firewalls.
Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) TechNet saw a more than 1,000 percent increase in unique visitors the week SoBig hit; Symantec's online unique visitor count increased more than 300 percent.
The good news about malware, then, is that each new worm, virus or blended threat encourages more users to develop "healthy" habits. Theoretically, at least, that should make for a stronger Internet environment.
Trilling noted that there is widespread interest in developing antivirus and data recovery systems that mimic our bodies' natural defenses. But while Symantec's current products incorporate some artificial intelligence, such as learning to recognize real threats versus legitimate user behavior, Trilling said systems that are truly self-recovering are still in early research phases.

Building Immunity

Like Evans, Sana Security's Hofmeyr has spent years contemplating bugs of both the electronic and biological sort. After completing his undergraduate degree in computer science and writing a masters thesis on genetic algorithms, Hofmeyr studied with leading immunology researchers at the University of New Mexico and others at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab. Now, he told TechNewsWorld, his goal at Sana Security is to realize a mode of computing that is "much more biological in nature."
To that end, the company developed Primary Response, a server-based software system that, like our bodies' immune systems, learns from both user actions and external stimulus. The U.S. Air Force was among the first installations, he said.
Hofmeyr admits designing computers to be more like humans isn't easy. For one thing, he pointed out, "We don't know how half of our immune system works." But the quest is worthwhile, he said -- and not merely for the sake of creating virus-resistant, self-healing machines. Hofmeyr believes that when we design computers that more closely mimic nature, they will also be inherently more user-friendly.
"People don't work with computers so much as they struggle with them," he told TechNewsWorld, "because people haven't evolved to work with computers." When we design computers that are more biological in nature, he noted, we will realize other benefits. Specifically, Hofmeyr said he hopes to see a more natural interface between man and machine.

Meanwhile, Take Your Vitamins

While we await evolutionary changes in computer-human relations, new threats in our current computing environment appear almost daily.
As Evans put it, "The key to having secure systems is to have designs where the impact of a single vulnerability is limited, and where the system can recover from attacks faster than the attackers can launch them."
So what's a computer user to do?
Until that day arrives when our computers can literally take care of themselves, a few preventive actions can go a long way toward keeping your system healthy. In other words, download your security patches, update your software, and wash your hands -- just in case.

Detect viruses in a computer using multiple antivirus engines

Virus detection and its removal are made through an antivirus program which finds out viruses in a computer and then possibly removes or repairs the virus problem. But today an interesting tip, how to scan your system without any installed antivirus program. You can scan any specific file for viruses, malware, worms and trojans on your system without any preloaded antivirus protection. 

VirusTotal is a free service that facilitates you for quick scan to detect viruses, malware, worms and trojans. VirusTotal will analyze your system files using multiple antivirus engines. VirusTotal is not a proper substitute of installed antivirus program, because this service works only when you will be connected to internet.

Now open the VirusTotal site to start scan process.

Now under the "Upload the file" section, click on browse button to select the virus affected file and press "Send File" button.

Here VirusTotal will takes some time to upload file (depends upon the file size and internet speed).

All About Computer Viruses.

Your computer is as slow as molasses. Your mouse freezes every 15 minutes, and that Microsoft Word program just won’t seem to open.

You might have a virus.

Just what exactly is a virus? What kind is in your computer? How did it get there? How is it spreading and wreaking such havoc? And why is it bothering with your computer anyway?

Viruses are pieces of programming code that make copies of themselves, or replicate, inside your computer without asking your explicit written permission to do so. Forget getting your permission down on paper. Viruses don’t bother to seek your permission at all! Very invasive.

In comparison, there are pieces of code that might replicate inside your computer, say something your IT guy thinks you need. But the code spreads, perhaps throughout your office network, with your consent (or at least your IT guy’s consent). These types of replicating code are called agents, said Jimmy Kuo, a research fellow with McAfee AVERT, a research arm of anti-virus software-maker McAfee Inc.

In this article, though, we’re not talking about the good guys, or the agents. We’ll be talking about the bad guys, the viruses.

A long, long time ago in computer years, like five, most viruses were comprised of a similar breed. They entered your computer perhaps through an email attachment or a floppy disk (remember those?). Then they attached themselves to one of your files, say your Microsoft Word program.

When you opened your Microsoft Word program, the virus replicated and attached itself to other files. These could be other random files on your hard drive, the files furthest away from your Microsoft Word program, or other files, depending on how the virus writer wanted the virus to behave.

This virus code could contain hundreds or thousands of instructions. When it replicates it inserts those instructions, into the files it infects, said Carey Nachenberg, Chief Architect at Symantec Research Labs, an arm of anti-virus software-maker Symantec. Corp.

Because so many other types of viruses exist now, the kind just described is called a classic virus. Classic viruses still exist but they’re not quite as prevalent as they used to be. (Perhaps we could put classic viruses on the shelf with Hemingway and Dickens.)

These days, in the modern era, viruses are known to spread through vulnerabilities in web browsers, files shared over the internet, emails themselves, and computer networks.

As far as web browsers are concerned, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer takes most of the heat for spreading viruses because it’s used by more people for web surfing than any other browser.

Nevertheless, “Any web browser potentially has vulnerabilities,” Nachenberg said.

For instance, let’s say you go to a website in IE you have every reason to think is safe, Nachenberg said.

But unfortunately it isn’t. It has virus code hidden in its background that IE isn’t protecting you from. While you’re looking at the site, the virus is downloaded onto your computer, he said. That’s one way of catching a nasty virus.

During the past two years, another prevalent way to catch a virus has been through downloads computer users share with one another, mostly on music sharing sites, Kuo said. On Limewire or Kazaa, for instance, teenagers or other music enthusiasts might think they’re downloading that latest Justin Timberlake song, when in reality they’re downloading a virus straight into their computer. It’s easy for a virus writer to put a download with a virus on one of these sites because everyone’s sharing with everyone else anyway.

Here’s one you might not have thought of. If you use Outlook or Outlook Express to send and receive email, do you have a preview pane below your list of emails that shows the contents of the email you have highlighted? If so, you may be putting yourself at risk.

Some viruses, though a small percentage according to Nachenberg, are inserted straight into emails themselves.

Forget opening the attachment. All you have to do is view the email to potentially get a virus, Kuo added. For instance, have you ever opened or viewed an email that states it’s “loading”? Well, once everything is “loaded,” a virus in the email might just load onto your computer.

So if I were you, I’d click on View on the toolbar in your Outlook or Outlook Express and close the preview pane. (You have to click on View and then Layout in Outlook Express.)

On a network at work? You could get a virus that way. Worms are viruses that come into your computer via networks, Kuo said. They travel from machine to machine and, unlike, the classic viruses, they attack the machine itself rather than individual files.

Worms sit in your working memory, or RAM, Nachenberg said.

OK, so we’ve talked about how the viruses get into a computer. How do they cause so much damage once they’re there?

Let’s say you’ve caught a classic virus, one that replicates and attacks various files on your computer. Let’s go back to the example of the virus that initially infects your Microsoft Word program.

Well, it might eventually cause that program to crash, Nachenberg said. It also might cause damage to your computer as it looks for new targets to infect.
This process of infecting targets and looking for new ones could eventually use up your computer’s ability to function, he said.

Often the destruction a virus causes is pegged to a certain event or date and time, called a trigger. For instance, a virus could be programmed to lay dormant until January 28. When that date rolls around, though, it may be programmed to do something as innocuous but annoying as splash popups on your screen, or something as severe as reformat your computer’s hard drive, Nachenberg said.

There are other potential reasons, though, for a virus to cause your computer to be acting slow or in weird ways. And that leads us to a new segment – the reason virus writers would want to waste their time creating viruses in the first place.

The majority of viruses are still written by teenagers looking for some notoriety, Nachenberg said. But a growing segment of the virus-writing population has other intentions in mind.

For these other intentions, we first need to explain the “backdoor” concept.

The sole purpose of some viruses is to create a vulnerability in your computer. Once it creates this hole of sorts, or backdoor, it signals home to mama or dada virus writer (kind of like in E.T.). Once the virus writer receives the signal, they can use and abuse your computer to their own likings.

Trojans are sometimes used to open backdoors. In fact that is usually their sole purpose, Kuo said.

Trojans are pieces of code you might download onto your computer, say, from a newsgroup. As in the Trojan War they are named after, they are usually disguised as innocuous pieces of code. But Trojans aren’t considered viruses because they don’t replicate.

Now back to the real viruses. Let’s say we have Joe Shmo virus writer. He sends out a virus that ends up infecting a thousand machines. But he doesn’t want the feds on his case. So he instructs the viruses on the various machines to send their signals, not of course to his computer, but to a place that can’t be traced. Hotmail email happens to be an example of one such place, Kuo said.

OK, so the virus writers now control these computers. What will they use them for?
One use is to send spam. Once that backdoor is open, they bounce spam off of those computers and send it to other machines, Nachenberg said.

That’s right. Some spam you have in your email right now may have been originally sent to other innocent computers before it came to yours so that it could remain in disguise. If the authorities could track down the original senders of spam, they could crack down on spam itself. Spam senders don’t want that.

Ever heard of phishing emails? Those are the ones that purport to be from your internet service provider or bank. They typically request some information from you, like your credit card number. The problem is, they’re NOT from your internet service provider or your bank. They’re from evil people after your credit card number! Well, these emails are often sent the same way spam is sent, by sending them via innocent computers.

Of course makers of anti-virus software use a variety of methods to combat the onslaught of viruses. Norton, for instance, uses signature scanning, Nachenberg said.

Signature scanning is similar to the process of looking for DNA fingerprints, he said. Norton examines programming code to find what viruses are made of. It adds those bad instructions it finds to its large database of other bad code. Then it uses this vast database to seek out and match the code in it with similar code in your computer. When it finds such virus code, it lets you know!

What is a Virus and how do I know if I have one?

If you are asking “What is a virus” then it is very important that you read through this article. There are some obvious symptoms that your computer will develop when it gets infected with a virus and to recognize these, you need to know what a virus is. But the first thing I have to mention is that if you had a decent antivirus program installed on your computer you would not have a problem. The virus programs now days are fantastic in crushing any chances of a viruses infecting your computer. There are many ways to protect your computer from viruses, however, knowing what a virus is should be your number one priority.

What is a virus?

What is a virus is a very important question! A virus is a small program that gets into your computer undetected in order to cause havoc. This small software program has either been developed because the author enjoys causing disasters for other people or sometimes for monetary gains. Sometimes a virus is packaged in a file that is called a trojan virus. It is disguised as something else, and once it has gained access to your computer it then releases its intent.  Also see What’s the difference between a virus, spyware, Malware, and adware?
What is a virus and how does it get onto my computer?

The people that develop these viruses are constantly finding new ways to infiltrate your computer. When one door shuts, another one opens for them. However the most common ways to get a virus on your computer is through the internet. You might download a file that contains a virus, or maybe you might open an email that has one attached to it. Sometimes even visiting a bad website can infect your computer. The worst one of all, however, is when people download illegal cracked software. This software has usually been taken apart and repackaged with a few extras attached. Maybe you download music or videos from the internet. How do you know you are actually downloading the file you intended to. The file may be named to deceive you, and once you open it you will release the virus.

Another common way to get a virus is to see software appear on your screen that is posing as an antivirus program. The minute you press the cross button to close the program or even the scan button, because it is telling you to scan for viruses, you are immediately infected by this virus. If you see a program come up on your screen that you know you did not install, the best way to shut it down is to open up task manager and end the process.

How do I know if I have a virus or not?

If your computer has been infected with a virus you will quickly see odd signs that it exists. Weird things start happening that you cannot explain. Files might move around, odd error messages may appear, programs might start to fail. For example if your virus scanner program stops working then it could have been disabled by a virus. With all this action taking place in the background your computer will also start to run slow and seem like it is busy all the time.

What can a virus do to my computer hardware components?

When browsing the internet you might find that you will not able to visits the pages that you choose. You will be redirected to different websites. You computer might also be sending emails to everyone in your contact list without you knowing.

People think that a virus simply attacks the file systems of your computer, however this is not true. Some viruses are designed to damaged computer hardware components until they are ruined completely.

What should I do if I get a virus?

Many people will argue that a virus only infects software, however all hardware is controlled by various types of software. Infact the entire computer is controlled by BIOS which is software. BIOS controls the temperature of the motherboard. What if a viruses only purpose was to change the temperature control on your motherboard. The motherboard would overheat and fry itself.

In the old days viruses used to be developed to set the read speed of a floppy disk drive to speeds beyond its capability. The Floppy disk drive would overheat and fry from being overworked. Now days Windows Vista has a service called Superfetch that searches your hard drive, finds out what you use the most, and makes it available for you.. If you made a virus to control Superfetch, we could have a serious problem. Most Vista users already have Superfetch disabled on their computer. A virus could enable it, tell it all files are important, keep it searching non stop, and fry your hard drive that way. Now I can here someone saying “yeah right, not with all the security we have around today”. Well you should never underestimate these guys who develop viruses. They can work around anything.

If you suspect that your computer has a virus, scan your computer asap with an antivirus program. If you do not have one or yours is not working, download another one, or get a free scan using the free online virus scanners.

Here is a list of free online virus scanners.

Symantec Security Check, McAfee FreeScan, Panda Active Scan, Trend Micro, Kaspersky lab, bit defender, and there are so many more. There is no guarantee that these free scanners will cure your computer but they might just confirm the fact that you actually have a virus.

If you find viruses but cannot remove them you will need to take your computer to a professional before you lose everything. Another option is to format your computer which means you loose all the files on it and re-install a fresh copy of the operating system. You can backup your files first, but please be aware that they might be infected with a virus also.

If you have scanned your computer, found viruses, and successfully deleted them, then now is the time to buy a decent program that will stop this from happening again. See my review of the best Virus Removal Software.

Do not continue to use the computer without taking action because the longer you leave it the further the virus can spread.

What is a virus? What file types commonly contain viruses?

Lets face it, downloading is a dangerous business, especially when you have important files stored on your computer. Any file you download can contain a virus. My rule for downloading is to ask myself “Do I know and trust this website I am about to download from?”

Here are a few examples of common files that could contain viruses:

EXE FILE: If you download a program or anything that requires an install file then it will be an .exe file. When you press on it to install to your computer you could be releasing a virus.

ZIP FILE: People download zip files from the internet that contain any other file type and you will not see it’s contents until you open it. A zip file might have an exe file in it.

SCR FILE: Free screensavers for your computer. They always have something bad in them. Sometimes adware or viruses.

DOC FILE: A Microsoft word document can contain macros and small scripts that are viruses.

Notes on what is a virus:

If you haven’t got antivirus software installed on your computer you can try Avast. It also takes care of spyware, malware, etc and it is fantastic!

• There is a lot of confusion about actually “what is a virus” because there are so many different types of viruses out there.
• Most, if not all websites on the Internet agree that a virus is a small piece of software that invade your computer.

I hope you are not still asking “what is a virus” as this can be a very dangerous question.