viruses
What to do once your PC is infected with spyware, ad-ware or
viruses
So you\’ve been running a virus program. Or you haven\’t. (Check
my previous 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 easiest method, is, of course, to format. Should you turn on
your PC and the infestation is so bad (and some of them are) you
need to format, simply slide a windows xp cd you\’ve either
bought or burned into your rom drive, re-boot, and go through
windows installation. Don\’t forget to enter your BIOS/CMOS and
change your boot sequence so your cd-rom drive boots before your
hard drive.
If you\’ve just got a small problem; your computer still runs
fine, then you can just clean up your hard drive with any number
of programs. There are many out there, but the ones I suggest
would be Spybot: Search and Destroy, Lavasoft ad-aware, and
Avast Anti-Virus.
All of these programs are free and can be downloaded off
download.com . Likely the most user-friendly program would be
Avast or Ad-aware. Spybot is a little more of an advanced
program. It is still one of the best, but if you have trouble
understanding PC problems, 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 too,
which can be downloaded from download.com as well, or whatever
your favorite download portal is.
Anyways, once you have one of these programs, start a scan and
attempt to remove the infestation. Most of these programs can
also schedule a boot time scan. This means your computer will
reboot and 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 loads or from safe
mode.
A boot-time scan is recommended as the first course of action to
remove your infestation. Should 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
spyware. Usually with spyware, once you have even a few files
infected, they spread like a virus and attempt to propogate
themselves. It\’s important you have a virus scanner to not only
delete old spyware, but prevent new spyware from popping up.
Avast is great for this.
Anyways, good luck and good hunting. Use a format as your last
course of action. Besides, it\’s good for your PC at least once a
year to format. This re-aligns your partition tables and
eliminates corruption as well as fragmentation.
About the author:
I am a young, aspiring computer engineer into Internet
Marketing, hardware, software, web design, SEO and just about
anything related to computers. Please come check out my growing
PC forum at www.markspcforum.com