Computer viruses are a concern of each and every computer user. These tiny programs can do a lot of damage! They are designed to move from one system to the next, without regard to security. In fact, they are actually designed to cause damage to the computers they infect.
Computer viruses can do all sorts of things to a computer system. They can do something as minor as erasing certain data on your computer, or they can be as serious as erasing the contents of a hard drive. These small malicious programs can also be attached to an email program so that the damage spreads to many different computers.
Email is the most common method by which computer viruses spread from one computer to another. These viruses are often disguised as an attachment to something that might be of interest to someone. For example, it can be disguised as a video clip, joke, image, or similar attachment. Nine times out of ten, it is attached as an “.exe” file.
There are many viruses embedded in downloads that can be retrieved from the Internet. This is also a very popular mode of infection. This is particularly true when people download specific files from peer-to-peer file-sharing programs and open source programs. It has been estimated that almost 90% of all downloads on these types of websites are infected with a computer virus.
There are many different signs and symptoms that can be associated with a computer virus infection. These are detailed below. However, keep in mind that these are POTENTIAL signs and symptoms of an infection:
1. If you find that your computer system seems to be experiencing a bit of sluggishness or is running a bit slower than it normally does, the possibility of getting infected with a computer virus is quite high. If you don’t have a computer virus, you may have problems with spyware on your system.
2. If your computer has already been attacked by a virus, it is very likely that you will start seeing various types of error messages that you are not familiar with.
3. Many people who experience a computer virus infection may begin to notice that the computer system often freezes and stops responding. This may or may not be accompanied by error messages.
4. Applications and programs on a computer that is infected with a virus may start to fail to initialize and/or run properly. If this problem is not corrected by uninstalling and reinstalling the application or program, you may be experiencing complications with a serious computer virus corrupting the data on your hard drive.
5. Many computer viruses pose a serious threat to the various drives found in the computer system. When an infection occurs, it may become apparent that the various drives in the computer system are not accessible. This is definitely a sign of a very serious computer virus infection.
6. Many people who experience complications from computer viruses may experience problems with printing and other types of tasks. This is usually the result of file corruption in printer drivers and other hardware products.
If you find that you are experiencing any of the symptoms mentioned above, or symptoms that are similar in nature, you should consider putting an antivirus program on your computer and running a full scan. You will probably find that, once the scan is complete; there is at least one virus on the computer that is causing your complications.
You can remove most viruses this way or with the malware removal tool offered by Microsoft. Viruses cannot be removed by “add/remove” programs on your computer. To remove them completely, they must be controlled by a good antivirus software suite or malware removal tool.