In this article...
This is a beginner's guide to viruses and spyware that tells you the following:
- What Viruses & Spyware are.
- How they work.
- What symptoms your computer might show if it is infected.
- What damage might be caused to your data if it gets infected.
- What steps can be taken to remove and prevent attacks from Viruses and Spyware
- Recommendations for helpful virus and spyware removing software.
by: Jim Edwards
Viruses and spyware usually show up on your computer one of two ways.
Either they invade your system with a frontal assault like the Huns attacking the Romans, or they sneak in a back door like a cat burglar.
Either way, once a virus or piece of spyware gets on your system, getting it off can rate harder than curing a severe case of trench foot!
Viruses, malicious programs designed to disrupt normal computing, and spyware, programs intended to literally "spy" on your activities, can enter your computer a number of ways.
Most commonly they enter your system through an email attachment, by sharing files with an infected computer by disk, as a "ride along" with a 3rd party program you install, or through a "back door" port in your computer.
Regardless of how they get on your system, once in place, they cause no end of headaches and frustration.
The following represent typical signs you may suffer from infection by a virus or piece of spyware.
Your computer starts acting oddly by doing things it never did previously.
Your modem starts trying to dial out to the Internet without you initiating a surfing session.
You notice that files start disappearing, the system stalls, runs slowly, or even crashes frequently.
Your computer takes progressively longer to boot up every time you start it or you notice that your available hard drive space has disappeared. Strange popup windows appear, even when you're not surfing the web, or you delete a program and it "magically" reappears next time you boot the system.
If you suspect you a virus or a piece of spyware has invaded your computer, follow these steps to first identify and then delete the offending code:
Step 1 - Back up your important files, but remember to scan these files for viruses before reinstalling to avoid accidentally re-infecting your system.
Step 2 - Update your anti-virus definitions and perform a scan of your hard drive.
If you don't carry virus protection, or you suspect your anti-virus software got corrupted somehow, then log on to www.pandasoftware.com and use the free Panda Active Scan service to check your hard drive for viruses.
Follow the instructions for quarantining and removing the offending files.
Step 3 - Scan your hard drive with an adware, scumware, or spyware detection and removal tool like Adaware www.lavasoft.de/support/download/ or Spybot http://spybot.safer-networking.de/.
Step 4 - In many cases, when the virus or spyware program gets installed with a free utility or game you download from the Web, you must usually uninstall the utility or game to finally get rid of the problem once and for all.
Step 5 - Avoid re-infection by keeping your anti-virus and firewall up-to-date at all times.
As a last resort, if you run into a program you simply can't get rid of, but can figure out the offending file's name, do a search for the file name on Google.com. Often you will find you're not the first victim and may get valuable advice for cleaning up your system.
However, be very careful of the information you find and think twice before modifying any system files.
About The Author
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links... Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? "Turn Words Into Traffic" reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com
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Picifix would like to add...
There is a way of knowing exactly what your computer is doing and finding out which programs or processes it is running. Right click on a blank part of the windows start bar and choose Task Manager. If you're new to the task manager don't worry its nothing to be afraid of -it might look like a lot of complicated information but it's just the task manager.
Click on the Processes tab and you get a list of everything your computer is running. You can sort the list by name, how much cpu power it uses, or how much memory it is hogging - just click the row headings,image name, cpu,or mem usage. Almost always the most cpu usage comes from something called "System Idle Process" this is actually a bit misleading because it is just an indicator for how much cpu power is not being used.
The image names are really not that helpful sometimes, so to find out what these names mean you can type them into Google. It is quite a good idea to make yourself a list of processes that your PC normally runs. Then you won't have to look up or remember what these names mean every time you want to find out why your computer is running slow. Searching for these names in Search Engines can help you to find Spyware, a Virus, or just a some software that you didn't know was automatically running itself. Quite often searches often pull up suggestions of how these processes can be stopped for good.
Some image names do get used for a variety of different processes - so you will need to read at least a few different pages before you can be sure you know why a processes is running.
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