What is a Computer Virus

Computer Viruses, What Are They And How You Can Protect Yourself

We have all heard of the dreaded computer viruses that do all sorts of annoying things to your computer and how people comment that anti-virus is so important. But what is a computer virus? Well, in simple terms, it is a piece of software that is usually downloaded to your computer without you knowing about it. This can occur while you are surfing the Internet, downloading and reading your e-mails or downloading media of some type from the Internet.

A virus will replicate itself or reproduce and those clones of the virus will keep attaching themselves to other files or parts of your computer. The word used for the attached virus is an infection and the file that is infected is called a virus host. There are many different types of infections including worms, backdoors, Trojans and malware.

There are two categories of viruses, annoying and destructive. The annoying viruses often slow your computer down and run in the background, not really causing a great deal of harm to your computer. These types of viruses are more of an inconvenience than a threat.

There are some computer viruses, however, that are very destructive. If you are unlucky enough to have your computer infected by a harmful or destructive virus, you are likely to lose data, functionality of your computer and, in some cases, you may have to physically take your computer to someone to have it fixed.

Computer Viruses, Do You Have An Infection?
There are some common symptoms that can be telltale signs that you have been infected by a computer virus. The most common is your computer running very slowly, although, if you have too many programs open at once or your network is experiencing problems, you may also notice your computer is running slowly.

One telltale sign you may notice when you have a virus, is some of your programs won’t work or you may not be able to open them. This is usually caused by an infection that has erased data needed to open the program. You may also notice that you have missing files or folders that you know were there before, but are gone now.

If you are getting strange warnings, messages or obscenities turning up on your screen without you asking for them, be very concerned. You may also notice that you have a sudden reduction in available disk space or warnings that you are out of space. This is a common virus side effect as viruses tend to take up as much space as they can in your hard drive as quickly as possible.

If you are having trouble saving things or you are noticing that your hard drive is being extremely difficult, it is likely that you have a virus on your computer. Other things, such as your computer doing things by itself, like opening up web pages, windows appearing then disappearing, your computer shutting off then restarting or your mouse pointer moving around on its own, are all well worth your suspicion that there is a virus on your computer.

Think You Have A Virus? What You Should Do 
If you suspect that you have a virus on your computer, you need to remove it. This may sound easier than it is as many viruses are very good at hiding themselves and your computer is a maze of different files with strange names. You have very little chance of finding an infected file yourself. This is why having a quality anti-virus is so important to the safety, and functioning of your computer.

If you don’t have anti-virus software running on your computer, you almost certainly do have a virus. If you have outdated or second rate anti-virus software running, the chances of you having an infection are very high. But before you find anti-virus software, you need to find out what is already running on your computer. Never run two anti-virus programs together. If you want to change anti-virus providers, remove the old one first or you may end up freezing your computer.

Once you have chosen an anti-virus software program and downloaded it, you will need to make sure that you get the latest updates, which can be automated, and scan your computer for viruses and infections at regular intervals.

Anti-virus protection is vital to your computer. If you don’t think you need it, ask yourself if you need your files deleted, computer invaded, your personal information stolen or paying out hundreds to have your computer repaired? If this is not acceptable, consider getting quality anti-virus software now.