Few things infuriate consumers more than losing data on their PCs. However, if you’re careless with your PC. You could also be fined as much as £500,000 or even face up to ten years in jail. This week’s PC Files column looks at how to protect your computer from becoming the victim of a PC virus. And how to tell if your computer is infected.
What’s a PC virus?
A virus is a malicious program that corrupts the data on your PC. It’s usually a type of worm that makes its way onto your computer and then spreads itself to other machines on the same network or local area network. Best PC Design Store is a platform that also explains PC tech.
With the intention of making money or stealing your personal information. Viruses are still quite a rarity. But you can get infected with worms if you accidentally download one onto your PC. If you click on an email attachment that contains one.
Viruses can’t take over your PC – instead, they’ll make themselves extremely hard to remove, and over time they can stop working entirely. A virus can also be a non-malicious program. Which You’ve downloaded, a network security flaw, or a program that’s being deliberately run as a virus?
But viruses don’t spread themselves. They need your computer to become infected, whether it happens by chance, by your use of other virus-infected sites, or by using applications that infect your PC, such as the free version of Adobe Reader. Here’s a typical scenario.
If you find a virus on your hard drive and then switch on your PC, it might start to spread. To do this, it needs to connect to your network – either via the Internet (to email the virus to other computers on your network or get them to download the virus to your computer) or using a USB flash drive plugged into your computer. Once your PC has been infected, the virus can then infect other PCs on the same network or local area network.
You may be able to get rid of the virus utilizing specialist anti-virus software or by applying some cleaning tools to your hard drive.
How to spot a virus?
When you’re installing your software, check whether your PC is missing any anti-virus software. To see if your antivirus software is up to date, open your System Tray and press the Update button. If your software is up to date, you’ll see a message in red saying that it has been updated to the latest version.
You should also check to see if your anti-virus software identifies any of the viruses you’ll be downloading. If your anti-virus software tells you that a file is infected, then it can usually remove it.
If the software doesn’t detect any viruses on your system, then it’s probably being fooled by a fake anti-virus program that’s doing the same thing.
I try to explain to you What is PC Virus?
The file doesn’t usually say that it’s a virus, but sometimes it’s easier to see if you’ve downloaded a real virus by looking at the file’s code and it will usually contain a virus infection number. If your anti-virus software says that a file is free of viruses, then it doesn’t contain a virus infection number, it probably isn’t.
If your antivirus software won’t give you a virus number, then you are required to access your virus scanner to check for viruses. If you do get it to search for a virus, you’ll probably get told that the virus is harmless, and you can delete it from your system.
You should regularly check your PC and make sure that no viruses are living on your hard drive. You can test whether your anti-virus software has found any viruses on your hard drive by looking at the results of the virus scan in your status bar. If your virus scanner says that there’s nothing there, then you can safely delete the file from your hard drive without fear of it infecting other PCs.
You might find that there’s no reason to do this, however. If your antivirus software doesn’t detect any viruses on your system, then it isn’t telling the truth. It may not be doing its job.
Virus removal tools
Virus removal tools will also be able to check your computer for viruses, but unlike anti-virus software, they don’t tell you whether or not there are viruses on your hard drive.
Instead, they’ll search your hard drive for malicious files. If the software identifies a virus or infection, it can usually remove it.
To use the software, you’ll need to download the file from the site and add it to your system. The malware removal software won’t ask you to install it; instead, it searches for any infections on your hard drive, scans them for infections, and removes any malware infections.
If the software identifies a malicious file, then you’ll be asked to download a file to remove the malicious infection from your computer. Hope You know the answer Now: What is PC Virus?
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