How to Remove Virus Guide

Learning how to remove a virus is simple, once you have the tools and understanding of what to look for. Many people do not know that they have been infected with a virus and blame their computer for being slow and unresponsive. However, these symptoms can be caused by an unwanted intruder lurking on your computer. On the other hand, weird symptoms can be caused by other mishaps, such as an unstable system. It’s also good to use the best registry cleaners to determine whether your system is affected by a virus or by unstable programs. Other causes for slow browsing speed are due to your internet connection and extra plug-ins that are installed on your toolbar. In this case, it will require more investigation on your part to determine your slow or unstable computer. However, if you do suspect it’s a virus on your computer, don’t panic. Many computer viruses are harmless; however, having an unwanted intruder on your PC is always alarming. Most viruses are there just to annoy and spread to as many computers as possible, thus, many times they are hard to detect just with the human eye. The first thing you should do is stop your web browsing activities. Do not turn off your computer and do not restart it as it could cause the infection to worsen.

First off, you are going to want to update your current anti-virus software. If you haven't already, make sure to buy antivirus protection. Virus removers are your first line of defense as it will be able to detect and prevent malicious programs from entering your computer. If you do not have a virus removal tool, shame on you! Every computer should have some sort of protection and you are leaving yourself vulnerable by not having one on your PC or laptop. AVG provides free anti-virus software that actually does a great job of protecting your computer, plus, it’s FREE. Go ahead and install this software if you do not already have it, otherwise some other programs that you can install are Trend Anti-Virus and Norton McAfee Anti-Virus. The main thing is, you must have a good tool to remove viruses and your tool must be updated constantly to be effective.

Diagnosing a virus is a difficult for many people because of the massive amount of internet browsing, e-mailing and chatting that everyone does on a daily basis. Many times, viruses are unknowingly spread to a friends’ computer during a chat session. Viruses are able to control chat programs such as Windows Messenger and can have autobots type things such as “Hey, check out this cool picture!” with a link to a virus. I’ve had this happen to me and so have millions of other unsuspecting people. Learning how the virus got on your computer will prevent you from doing the same mistakes over and over again. The best thing to do is backtrack and determine when your computer started to act up. If you were chatting with a friend, ask them if their computer is acting funny and whether they have run an anti-virus program on their computer. If your friend checks their antivirus software, they can look through their log to determine what viruses were captured. This step will help you with future infections so that you will know to steer clear of these types of schemes in the future. 

At this point you should have already updated your anti-virus removal tool. The next step is to go ahead and scan your computer with your software and make sure to complete a full-scan. A full scan performs a “deep clean” of your system as a quick scan only scans the more important items. To run a web-based scan, you can go to Symantec’s website and run a scan right off their website. Click the red start button under the virus detection column. A pop-up will open a new window and will ask you if you want to install and run virus detection. Once you click yes, a virus definition and utilities window will pop up and ask if you want to install new definitions. Once again, click yes and your computer will then be scanned for viruses. It might take awhile depending on the speed and size of your computer. It took my scanner 1:30 to perform a full scan on my computer. McAfee also provides this service free of charge and you can find their free virus scanner at www.mcafee.com. The installation and scanning process is similar to the Symantec set up. Once your system is scanned, you can determine what type of infections you have on your computer and research how the virus affects each component of your PC. You will have the chance to learn how to remove it manually by deleting the virus files or by modifying the system registry. The free online scanners will not perform live protection or automatically remove the viruses for you. In order to be more efficient, it’s better if you use a virus removal tool and make sure to couple it with a free spy ware tool.  If you are looking to buy antivirus, make sure to read a good review from a trusted website so that you do not end up paying for a crappy virus scanner.