What is a Computer Virus
Computer Virus is nothing but a small software designed by a highly knowledgeable Computer Programmer. The sole aim of a computer virus is to crash the computer of an unsuspecting user. Today, there are thousands of viruses being transmitted through various websites, in downloaded files, through free software, through emails, in CD, DVD, Floppy, USB devices, Phones, Digital Cameras and virtually any medium including wireless blue tooth and everything that you can imagine. So not buying and installing a good antivirus software in your computer making silly excuses that you do not connect your PC or Laptop to the internet is highly dangerous. A Virus can actually wipe out all your important hard disk data in the blink of an eye. You will be amazed to find that your computer already has many virus installed and live. A few indications and symptoms of a Computer Virus existing in your PC or Laptop is as given below: -
Computer Virus Slows Your PC Performance
When a computer virus attacks your computer, the very first symptom will be slow performance. Sometimes you will find that the programs that used to run have stopped running or are taking too long to run or may give your Windows Errors of Out-of-Memory messages even when you have a lot of RAM installed. This is because the computer virus load your CPU with so much of work to do that your CPU, your PC memory and other resources will already be busy and running at full power. You can try to stop these application o services taking up full power of your PC by using Windows Task Manager. But computer virus would have already disabled the task manager from running. So the only way out would be to remove computer virus from your PC/Laptop that is causing these problems. Computer Virus Reformats Your Hard Disk
Once a Computer Virus infects a file, the virus starts making many copies of the same file and starts filling up all the free space available on all your hard disks and partitions. Often the computer virus also reformats your hard disk and you will lose all your data on the hard disk. Although, Windows does not allow formatting the hard disk containing the Operating system, the virus can still force formatting your C drive or whichever drive contains the operating system. If you do lose your hard disk data it is still possible to get it back because the computer virus just removes the data from your registry, but the data physically still remains in your hard disk till it is over written by another file. Recover Lost/Deleted Data Now!Computer Virus Freezes up Your PC
The second symptom of a Computer Virus attack is when Your files and folders take longer to open, all software application will take unusually long to open, your mouse and keyboard clicks will start taking longer to give a response on the monitor screen. Often your computer may stop responding during startup just when your desktop icons start appearing. All this is because the computer virus makes your computer to transfer data from your hard disk to memory and back trying to slow down your computer. If your CPU, hard disk or memory cannot take this load, then your computer will finally freeze up or locks up. You may need a restart you computer using the reset button. But the symptom will reappear till you remove computer virus causing your PC to lockup.Computer Virus Can Also Crash Your Computer
Sometimes a Computer Virus corrupts your Windows Operating System files or may even delete them on startup before Windows loads. When Windows fails to find the necessary file to startup your computer or opens the virus affected file, your computer will fail to startup and may keep crashing and restart repeatedly till you remove the Computer Virus causing your Computer to crash.
Computer Virus Cause Windows Error Messages
When the Computer virus hinders the normal functioning of Windows Operating System, you will start getting unusual Windows Error Messages. Often these errors are automatically generated by the Computer Virus itself to put the computer user into panic and waste money trying to repair a Windows problem that actually may not exist at all. The solution is to remove computer virus from your PC and Laptop.
Computer Virus Can Damage PC Hardware
Originally people thought that a virus can only harm to your Software, Operating System and wipe out data on hard disk. But today highly advanced and superbly programmed Computer viruses are capable of damaging your computer hardware and chip driven devices like your cameras, USB, Printers, Scanners etc by altering the BIOS and device drivers or their associated software installed in your Computer. Most virus gets downloaded with some file you download or from a site you visited without your knowledge. It will also get installed without asking your permission. And the virus may be set to trigger an attack on your PC or Laptop on a predetermined day, date and time. Once attack commences there is no way to stop the virus.Computer Virus Disables Access to CD, USB, Hard Disk etc
This is one of the confirmatory symptoms of the presence of a Computer Virus as it disables your ability to access your hard disk or your CD rom or any of your USB devices. There may not be any hardware failures, but the computer virus will give the indication that your hardware has failed. Remove Computer Virus before you pay PC technician to resolve an issue that is caused by a simple computer virus that you can fix yourself in minutes.
Computer Virus Disables Your Printer
Before you start checking your Printer for problems when it stops functioning, just do a scan for computer virus because there are thousands computer viruses already roaming the internet that are specifically designed to disable print function in Windows. You may see the print button and you may feel that the print file has been sent to your printer. But your printer will not print anything because the print data is actually not sent to the printer. Computer virus is designed to be very intelligent and detects your printer hardware and accordingly fake your printer by removing the printer drivers and installing its fake drivers. So just be careful and ensure that you have removed computer virus if such a problem occurs.
Computer Virus Distorts Your Windows Dialogbox
A more confirmatory symptom of a computer virus attack is when you find that your Windows dialog boxes are all distorted and some important buttons are missing like the OK or Cancel buttons. Do not ignore these symptoms. Install a good Antivirus Software if you do not have one already in your Computer before it is too late.
Computer Virus Infects all Applications/Programs
Computer Viruses are often designed to attack some software like Microsoft Office applications like Word, Access, Excel, Powerpoint etc. Often you will find that these applications either do not start or will take very long to startup or may look and work in an unusual manner. Not only that the virus uses these applications to replicate. When you send a word or excel file etc to some other computer on LAN or Internet or on CD, USB etc, you actually are helping to spread the computer virus through that file. Thus if you think your PC or Laptop is infected with a Computer Virus, you must make all out effort to remove Computer Virus from your PC before you send a file, email etc to prevent other computers from getting infected.
Computer Virus Installs/Uninstalls Softwares
A Computer Virus can uninstall any of your software without your knowledge. The Computer Virus is also capable of installing software in your computer without your permission. You will get to know this only when one of your software goes missing or a new icon appears on your desktop or another icon vanishes. Computer Virus causes strange sounds to play on your PC or Laptop. The computer virus will also disable your installed antivirus in the next startup. This is true especially if you are using a free antivirus version and your computer gets exposed to more virus and spyware attacks. A few dollars spent on antivirus software will prevent a lot of frustrations and loss of data.
How Computer Virus Enters Your PC/Laptop ?
Often a Computer Virus enters a PC or Laptop from virus loaded websites online, and through email. The Computer Virus comes in your Email as attachments like .exe,.bat,.scr and.vbs extensions. Even if you do not connect your PC to internet the Computer Virus can still enter your computer through CD, USB devices, Floppies, Digital Cameras and such other devices that you may insert into your PC. It is estimated that there are over one billion websites of which more than one million is malware loaded webistes on the internet. That means one out of every thousand website that you visit can infect your computer with a virus or spyware or a trojan or a worm. These websites are so designed that the moment the website opens on your computer screen, the virus or spyware gets downloaded. The virus downloads like a part of the webpage your are viewing. This makes it impossible for either your web browser security features or even your antivirus program from detecting its presence. To prevent Computer Virus entering your PC/Laptop remember to always
Scan DVD/CD/Floppy/USB Devices before inserting these into your Computer. Remember that Prevention is Better than Cure.
Why You Can't Remove a Computer Virus ?
Once downloaded to your computer, the virus or spyware launches itself and starts installing in a stealth mode like a genuine microsoft program or an essential service. Thus the virus or spyware has ensured that a common antivirus program cannot even detect it running and causing problems even if you do a mannual scan. Any program running in the kernel mode or Ring 0 of Windows cannot be deleted without stopping it. And the virus running as a windows protected program cannot be stopped. So if your want to remove this virus you will have to actually switch off your computer and restart in DOS mode without the Windows loading. Then you will have to navigate in the DOS mode to the folder where the virus exe file is installed and delete it.
Computer Virus Uses Your Email to Replicate
Once installed, the virus does not usually do any harm. The programmer wants the virus to send its own copy to other computers using your email address book either from your own computer through CD,floppy, USB devices etc or from your email host server to ensure that the virus spreads to as many computers in the world as possible. When the computer virus starts sending its own copy as email from your computer you can see that your internet modem has continuous activity. Once the computer virus achieves this, it starts to slow down your computer performance, delete important Windows files that cause Computer freezes and crashes.
Anti-Virus Software. Removes Computer Virus
Once your PC or Laptop is infected with a Computer Virus or a Spyware/Malware it is possible to remove it easily using a good AntiVirus Software. There are many antivirus software available in the market. You may even find free antivirus tools. But remember not to compromise on your antivirus software. In fact, you should buy and install a good antivirus software the moment you have bought a new PC or laptop or you have freshly installed Windows Operating System. As mentioned above, often some virus and spyware are very hard to detect. If not detected, it cannot be removed and this computer virus could crash your PC/Laptop and wipe out all your data from the hard disk in such a way that it cannot be recovered. I strongly recommend you to
Download Paretologic Anti-Virus Free Scan. After the free virus scan you will be amazed at the number of Virus, Spyware, Trojans, Worms, Keyloggers, Browser hijackers, Dialers and other Malware already existing in your computer.
Do Not Install More Than One AntiVirus Software
Many people think that they will get better results by installing more than one antivirus software. This is not correct. when Windows operating system loads, it ensures that your computer protections software like antivirus software loads before other software programs. But if you have installed a second antivirus software, then the first antivirus software software that loads during startup of your computer will detect the second antivirus software as a virus and will not let load, delays your computer startup or freeze up your computer before completing the startup sequence. At times your computer will crash, restart and crash again repeating this process. If such a problem occurs, use
Windows System Restore to bring back your computer to previous state before you installed the second anti-virus software. To install another antivirus software, you must uninstall your existing Anti-Virus Software and restart your computer once and then only try to install the new antivirus Software. Sometimes anti-virus software does not uninstall. Some times the virus itself may not uninstall itself completely from your computer. In such cases you may use
Perfect-Uninstaller. It can remove any software or application without leaving any trace. Perfect Uninstaller is many times better than using the Windows inbuilt Add/Remove and is strongly recommended by computer experts world over.
Updating AntiVirus Software in Your Computer
Remember that internet hackers are always coming out with new improved computer viruses and spyware that beats the latest anti-virus and AntiSpyware software available in the market. The antivirus software companies keep a vigil and whenever a new computer virus is discovered or reported by a user, they immediately release a patch or update for these new virus and spyware. It is thus very very important that you keep your antivirus software updated by downloading the patches and updates from your antivirus company websites. The antivirus updates are usually given away free because the antivirus company wants to keeps its reputation high. This game between the antivirus company and virus creating hackers are continuously on. Ensure that you do not fall victim to any
Internet Cyber Crime
