Do You Have a Virus? Basics of Virus Removal

If you have a virus your doctor probably prescribed an antibiotic for you. It is too bad the same cannot be applied to a computer. A computer virus attacks at many levels. It moves throughout your system and can be difficult to eradicate. In advanced cases it can get into the root area and prevent your system from booting up. If this happens you may have to format ( erase ) your hard drive and reinstall the operating system. This is time consuming and unnecessary if you have the proper protection. The regular user will find it beyond their ability to do this and will contemplate taking their computer to a repair shop. Don't do it! Until you read this! I will help you to try to do this on your own. If you are still unable to fix the problem yourself I implore you to find an alternative to a computer repair shop. If you know a friend or family member that knows a little about computers they can probably do it.

First of all you need a good antivirus program. See my site for recommendations. An antivirus program can protect you, but if you are already infected please read on. You will run the program and it will find a virus and you think GREAT! This was easy. Not so fast! People write these nasty things to avoid removal. The virus will duplicate, replicate, and move around to avoid discovery and removal. You have to attack the virus just like it attacked you.

What I am going to tell you now you must consider carefully. If you have a backup program, use it. Remember most backup programs will only restore your computer to a predetermined state which means that your computer will 'go back in time' and will not retain any additions such as updates to programs, drivers, files (pictures and anything else you have saved since.), or anything else. I do encourage active use of a backup program for many reasons. ( What if your hard drive fails? ).

If you do not have a backup then here is what you must do. Running an antivirus program will hunt down and find the virus. I have found that you will need to run it several times, but what you need to know is that you must turn off system restore (XP users). System restore will SAVE the virus! Please remember that once you disable system restore you will lose all restore points. This is what you want to do. Here is how to do it. Right click on my computer and choose properties. Select the system restore tab and check turn off, it will take a moment but this is normal. Go back to your desktop and run your antivirus. Once you have removed any malware you MUST go back and turn on system restore again. In my opinion system restore is not really a program of much value. When I need it most it won't restore!

 

A quick note here, if you want to backup your system and you need a program you can visit my site. You can also find the free Microsoft backup utility by, (if it was installed) clicking start/ programs/ accessories/ system tools/ backup. If not installed you can add it from your installation disk. It will consume space so only select C (system drive) and unselect everything unnecessary and also select System State.

Good Luck!

Maumee Valley Computer.

Providing software for computer security and optimization that is user friendly and effective. Clean, protect, and optimize your computer to restore peak performance.

http://jmdcomputer.blogspot.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alan_Hohenbrink

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