Computer Viruses - How To Detect, Remove And Prevent Them

I want to talk a little about the dreaded computer virus. The goal of this article is to teach you, the home user, the fundamental skills needed to help detect, remove, and most importantly prevent viruses from infecting your computer. As the owner of a computer consulting business, I have seen 1st hand how much damage computer viruses can do. To help protect yourself from a virus attack, it will be necessary to understand exactly what a virus is. A virus is essentially a software program designed with malicious intentions, to copy itself and spread from one computer to another. What makes a virus so dangerous is what they are designed to do.

A virus, once installed on your computer, can easily corrupt or delete data from your computer. This can be anything from your latest Word document to the irreplaceable pictures of your loved ones. We will get into exactly what a virus can do later in this article. Now that you have an idea of what a virus is and what it can do to your computer, lets discuss how your computer gets infected. I have heard countless times from people, " But I did not open any email attachments, how can I be infected?" While it is true that a majority of viruses are hidden within email attachments, they can also be downloaded into our computers in the form of images, videos, or even instant messages. I have personally removed a virus from Cd's, jump drives, and floppy disks.

Lets talk about ways to help protect your computer from viruses. To protect your computer from these threats it is vital that you have an anti virus program installed and up to date. I have seen many times in the field computers that have anti virus programs but still are infected with a virus. Let me point out that not all anti virus programs are equal. I will not discuss in this article which anti virus program you should or should not use however email me and I will be happy to help you in that aspect. Your anti virus program will do you little good if you do not keep your definitions up to date. New virus are being identified all the time so it is vital to keep your anti virus program up to date on the latest threats. Another proven method is to use a firewall.

A firewall is essentially software or hardware that is designed to filter out information that is being sent to or from your computer. Think of a firewall as a Guard at the end of your driveway, before anyone enters your home they must first pass a set of rules or security checks you have given before they are allowed to enter your home. Some of the software-based firewalls include Norton Internet Security, Zone Alarm and Trend Micro. You may be using a hardware firewall and not even know it. If you have a LAN (Local area network) then chances are you have a router of some kind. Most routers come built in with a firewall, which is very effective at protecting your computer from viruses. Another technique used to help prevent viruses is to keep your computer up to date. If you are using a windows based PC, check Windows Update often for any security patches that are released.

Do not open email attachments if you do not know the sender, this is asking for trouble. Lets move on to identifying infected computers. As a PC technician, it is my responsibility to quickly identify the signs of virus infections. Computers with virus infections will often show some of the following symptoms. Please note, that the issues listed below may be caused by several problems, such as spyware, and are not specific to viruses. Your computer may be slow to start or shut down. You may be missing data on your hard drive or, in worst case scenarios, lose all data on the drive. You may experience strange error messages or you computer will shut down unexpectedly. Your fonts may be distorted and overlap or you may experience difficulties in printing.

These are just some examples of the harm viruses can do. Now the most difficult part, removal. This is a topic worthy of its own article as there are many different procedures in virus removal. I will discuss with you the very basics. If you think you are the victim of a virus do a thorough scan of your computer. It may also be beneficial if you scan your hard drive while in safe mode. This is usually accomplished by tapping F8 at start up, but refer to your computer's manual for instructions to be certain.

If you do not have an anti virus program, first thing to do is get one! In the meantime you may use the services of an online virus removal tool. Many of the popular anti virus programs offer this service. My intent of this article was to help inform you of the dangers virus threats can pose, as well as giving you the knowledge to help detect, remove and prevent these threats. I hope I have accomplished this, and you can walk away after reading this article, feeling more confident of your abilities to protect your computer from virus threats.

Article Source: Derick_Nigro

Remove Computer Virus Completely

Remove Computer Virus Completely - How to Keep Your PC in Safe With Simple Methods

Computer virus has brought so many destroyable influences to network and computer users that we need to improve security awareness and take more actions to defense computer virus, in order to keep our PC in safe. To avoid attacks from virus, there is a lot we need to know and we should do. Now you can take this review and find out the tutorial suggestions for you.

How to keep your PC safe

For most computer users, they like their PC a lot when they first got it. That is true. But after using for a while, you will find that your laptop has become more and more slow and you even do not want to use it again! How can you do? To get a new one? Of course you can get rid of this problem completely by doing this. However, not every one can afford a new one and this is also not the wisest way. To save your computer, you can do as follow:

1. Install security program for safeguarding your PC and do not install more than one security tool at the same time.

2. Be very careful when you want to open any unknown emails. You should never click any of them.

3. Do the backup job timely in case your machines crashes.

4. If your computer is infected with virus unfortunately, you should take the following actions:
a) Disconnect to internet, such as unplug the internet cable.
b) Press Ctrl+Alt+Del at the same time to launch Task Manager. Check whether there is suspicious process running in it.
c) Reboot your PC and press F8 to go to Safe Mode.
d) Open your security program and use it to scan your whole system.
e) Run regedit and delete all the suspicious Keys in Registry Boot Items: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run(RunOnce,RunServices)
HKEY_LOCAL_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
f) Delete all the detected files or processes immediately.

Article Source:EzineArticles.com/3567434

Erica Green

Remove Computer Virus

How To Remove Computer Virus

Did you know that you don't have to be professionally trained, with years of experience in order to remove a virus, trojan or other type of malware from your computer? By following proven, step by step details, you can actually remove any harmful software from your computer, for free!

In the last article of this series "The Top 22 Signs Of A Virus Infected Computer", we learned how to identify the signs of a virus infected computer, and a few safeguards on how to prevent infection. We will now dive in to the steps required for successful computer virus removal, with the same techniques that the highly skilled technicians use!

If you are able to connect to the internet, browse the internet, download files and follow simple instructions in an outline format, you too can learn how to remove viruses and never pay an arm and a leg for virus removal...ever again! Let's begin!

1.) Prepare the computer for scanning.

Disconnect from the internet. Malware can connect to the internet; update itself when needed, download more malicious software from the internet, upload sensitive data to the internet and much more. Always disconnect the internet as a first step in scanning a computer infected with a virus!

2.) Create a current Restore Point.

Open "System Restore" (System Protection in Vista and Windows 7). Create a restore point for the current day in which you are performing the computer virus removal.

3.) Remove all writable media.

Disconnect all memory cards, external USB drives, and other storage devices from the computer. Viruses tend to spread easily to drives and media connected to an infected computer so it's best to disconnect any to prevent spreading the virus.

4.) Check for suspicious software in programs

Check for software with strange names, or programs with strange characters within the name such as: #*@#, etc. Also check for programs that don't look familiar as it could be malware.

5.) Check for suspicious programs in the start-up menu

Access the "startup menu" (msconfig) and check under the "Startup" tab for suspicious programs as noted above. Look for any software that has no "publisher" and look for any software with no name; and uncheck them all because they are threats! It's always possible to re-check programs to startup with Windows if needed, since they aren't deleted.

6.) Scan for threats using antivirus software

Download or (insert the disk of) your favorite antivirus software. One secret that the antivirus sellers don't want you to know is that free antivirus software works just as effectively or better, than several "well-known" brands for computer virus removal! Install your antivirus software and update it for the most recent virus definitions (internet connection needed). Scan computer (all removable disks) using the FULL scan option (if available). Remove any malware that is found, and reboot the computer or allow it to reboot if prompted.

7.) Scan for threats using anti-spyware software

Download or (insert the disk of) your favorite antispyware software. Install your antispyware software and update it for the most recent threat definitions (internet connection needed). Scan the computer (all removable disks) using the FULL scan option (if available). Remove any malware that is found, and reboot the computer or allow it to reboot if prompted.

8.) Remove temporary files

Remove temporary computer (Windows) files by using a temp file remover, to remove temporary files such as internet cookies, local user files, browsing history, etc. There are good temp file removers out there, one of the most common and effective one being CCleaner, feel free to find it in your favorite search engine and install it, or any other that you deem effective.

Scan your computer using the temp file cleaner, and allow it to "clean" or remove the temp files it find. It can take quite awhile, so be patient. Also, depending on how long it has been since your last computer tune-up, the files deleted could total in the gigabytes! This will help speed up your computer's overall performance, and remove remnants of leftover viruses.

9.) Clear browser cache

Clear the browser cache of your favorite browser. If you do not know how to do this, go to the Help link in your browser. This step may not necessarily be needed if you used the temp file cleaner, but it is good to know how to remove cookies, files, history etc, from your browser to increase performance and remove malware remnants after any computer virus removal.

10.) Re-scan the computer for virus infections and other threats

Re-scan for threats using antispyware and antivirus software that you used initially, just to make sure the PC is clean. If not, repeat the scanning steps as highlighted above. Don't scan using both programs simultaneously, as "false-positives" can occur, or super slow scanning can result; therefore, taking hours to complete scanning.

11.) Use a GOOD registry cleaner

The Windows registry is vital for your computer to function. Many types of viruses, Trojans etc, attack the Windows registry. This can cause unreliability, a slow computer, missing programs and files, and even the failure to boot your computer. Using a reliable registry cleaner can correct errors that occur regularly within Windows, as well as correct errors that can cause multiple computer problems.

It is best to be extremely careful when using registry cleaners as the registry becoming corrupt will spell the end of your Windows installation. Using the registry cleaner to restore a computer after an infection is necessary.

Next, restart your PC and check for abnormal behavior (as explained in the last article)

If the computer works just fine, there are no unexpected errors, crashes or threats detected by your software, your computer just might be clean!

To learn specific, proven tactics, such as: the exact (free) software to use, how to scan for viruses and spyware, how to scan and clean the registry, how to remove temporary files, how to remove hidden files that antivirus software can't detect, how to remove viruses when a computer won't boot and more, feel free to check out the The PC Technicians Virus Removal Manual; the link is noted in the resource box for this article!

In the meanwhile, I hope you learned enough to keep a defensive against computer virus infections (or other malware), and are on your way to removing those nasty programs out there just waiting to infect your computer!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6065879