Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Get rid of PC virus.

 

 A virus can slow down your PC, corrupt files or delete them altogether. Technicians often recommend formatting your computer and starting afresh, but that may not be necessary if you keep a new antivirus [different from the one your PC already has] handy and follow these steps.

 

1.      Choose all programs and fire up the antivirus you have installed. [If you don’t have any, go to step 3] In the antivirus scanner settings enable deep mode scanning. You may see a “warning” that says this process is slow; ignore it. Now look for the action option-what to do if a virus is found. Set this to Quarantine, and DO NOT set it to Delete just yet. Start the scan and leave your computer alone till that’s done. You could even turn off the monitor.

2.      Turn the monitor on. If scanning has finished, open up the quarantine report, and see how many files have been quarantined; the dangerous ones. Even if nothing comes out of this scan, proceed to the next step.

3.      Shut down and restart. Keep the F5 key pressed while restarting to bring up a list of Startup Options. Choose Safe Mode. Once in Safe Mode, you’ll see a message telling you some programs won’t work. Click OK.

4.      This important. Go to Add/Remove programs to uninstall your antivirus software as it may be infected too. Restart in Safe Mode again. Keep the F5 key pressed.

5.      Once restarted, insert the antivirus CD- don’t use a pen drive for this-and install the new antivirus [preferably one of the free ones like AVG Free, BitDefender Free edition, or CA Antivirus]. Once installed run deep scan again. It will be faster this time because the PC is in Safe Mode and most of the infected files are already in quarantine.

6.      If you see some more files, move them all to quarantine and then shut down the computer. Restart normally.

7.      Go online and update the new antivirus. After that, run a full scan again. It may find more threats, but that’s unlikely with a new antivirus.

 

Your PC is now clean. If you have trouble, you will either need to format the PC or get an expert to clean it for you. Scan your PC regularly, stay away from downloading unnecessary stuff and backup your data daily.