The VIRUS Phobia

A general computer science student working at his room suddenly notices something strange in his system. Some of the icons are distorted, a folder inside the folder with the same name, and some applications are not working properly. He immediately thinks that what happened to the system, then it strikes to his mind that his computer may be infected by a virus. He instead of removing the virus makes up his mind to format the system, reinstalling the windows and then the various drivers and finally all the applications.

This is the general view of many of the peoples who knows how to install the windows. The rest who don’t know how to install windows, thinks that many of the things in the system are not working properly, and due to the fear that it will spoil their costly system, they immediately call the vendor to do the things right; which in turn charges them a huge amount in lieu of doing the things right, which in fact is not a difficult task. Thus, many of us don’t exactly know how to handle the situation when a computer is attacked by a virus.

Whenever you notice that the system is doing something strange, some of the applications are not working properly, windows is distorted then it may be the case that your system may be infected by virus. But there is nothing to panic. Remain calm and try to find out the virus and also find the way to fix that.

Amit Saxena, a student of Electrical and Electronics branch, is having system just only to carry out general word processing, listening songs, and watching movies. He used to collect the media from various sources and don’t worry about whether the data is safe or not. Result is, very often his system is infected with virus. And when the situation of the system becomes critical that it can’t work further then he simply formats the system, mostly spoiling his 4 to 5 hours. Thus in a month he use to format his system about 5 to 6 times. This is not right, as it creates a bad effect on the hard disk.

Handling a virus attack in fact is not a hard nut to crack. Just you need some knowledge and most important is the “patience”. As prevention is better than cure, so it is beneficial to protect your computer using a good anti-virus program, keep the virus definitions update and also copy data from secure source. Whenever you bring any data from sources that you think may be vulnerable to viruses, always scan that.

Whenever you find that your computer is infected by virus then there is no need to panic. Simply think of the source from where the virus made its way to the system, block that way so that it can’t make its way back to the system when you are on your way to fix that virus. To fix most viruses just follow the following steps:

• Update the virus definitions of your anti-virus program.
• Turn-off the system restore utility in windows XP. If it’s not possible to turn off the system restore, then restart the system in the safe mode and then turn off the system restore.
• Perform full system scan, select fix for all the found viruses. If some of the viruses that cannot be fixed by the anti-virus program; quarantine all those infected files.

In most of the cases above provided steps will fix the problem, and if problem still persists then go online and get a fix for that particular virus.

Always make back up of your important data, so that in case of virus attack you not lose your data that may be the result of years of work. So, next time if you get infected by virus then don’t try to reinstall windows or call vendor for help, simply do it yourself.