My PC is Infected By Viruses, Now What?

So you have been walking a virus program. Or you haven't. (Check my earlier article on keeping your computer at top speed by using Avast). Either way, your PC is now infected by spyware/ad-ware, or even worse, a virus. What DO you do?

The simplest method, is, of coursework, to format. Ought to you turn on your PC & the infestation is so bad (& some of them are) you require to format, fundamentally slide a windows xp cd you have either bought or burned in to your rom drive, re-boot, & go through windows installation. Don't forget to enter your BIOS/CMOS & change your boot sequence so your cd-rom drive boots before your hard drive.

In case you have got a tiny problem; your computer still runs fine, then you can neat up your hard drive with any number of programs. There is a lot of out there, but the ones I recommend would be Spybot: Search & Damage, Lavasoft ad-aware, & Avast Anti-Virus.

All of these programs are free & can be downloaded off download.com . Likely the most user-friendly program would be Avast or Ad-aware. Spybot is a bit more of an advanced program. It is still of the best, but in the event you have trouble understanding PC issues, you might have troubles understanding how Spybot works. (You could always read the readmes or their forums, however). Microsoft has also released a new program , which can be downloaded from download.com as well, or whatever your favorite download portal is.

Anyways, time you have of these programs, start a scan & try to remove the infestation. Most of these programs can also schedule a boot time scan. This means your computer will reboot & scan before you load windows. This can help remove most infestations because most spyware/ad-ware/viruses can manifest themselves in windows so well that they cannot be deleted unless you delete them before windows lots or from safe mode.

A boot-time scan is recommended as the first coursework of action to remove your infestation. Ought to you continue to experience slower PC speeds, you could try using a virus scanner to not only scan your hard drive, but prevent your PC from getting more adware. Usually with adware, time you have even a few files infected, they spread like a virus & try to propagate themselves. It is important you have a virus scanner to not only delete elderly adware, but prevent new adware from popping up. Avast is great for this.

Anyways, nice luck & nice hunting. Use a format as your last coursework of action. Besides, it is nice for your PC at least time a year to format. This re-aligns your partition tables & eliminates corruption as well as fragmentation.