Aniti Virus or Anti Virus Protection

A computer virus is much like the human version in that it's purpose is to spread from system to system, replicating itself all the while causing damage to each infected host. A computer virus can range in size and purpose but typically they are small bits of code which are hidden in or attached to other files. The word virus is often a broad term which is used to refer to things such as worms, spyware, adware, malware, trojan horses and rogue software but all these things are actually different and fall into a class of there own. The problems and damage that are caused by an infection can be extremely varied. The infection may be as simple as a prank that will cause strange noises, pop-ups and other annoying instances to occur on your system. They may delete files and slow down your system or they could even damage your hardware or possibly destroy your entire computer system. Once on your system an infection will spread by attaching to other programs and files within your system. Viruses will often not just replicate within your system but also attempt to spread to other systems outside of the locally infected one by methods such as taking control of your email and sending out copies of itself to those in your contacts list.

There are several ways that your system may become infected. The most common way a virus is spread is thru infected attachments to email. These attachments may come in the form of pictures, videos, sound clips or just about any other type of file that can be attached to an email. Infections can also be spread through internet downloads. These could be completely legitimate files or links which have been altered unknowingly to include a virus or they can come from illegal software downloaded via peer-to-peer programs or other services.

Here are some signs that may indicate that your system may have been infected.

·         The occurrence of random pop-ups, noises or music.

·         Random files and icons appearing on your desktop or other places when you did not install such things.

·         Files and icons which were on your system before have disappeared without you having uninstalled or moved them.

·         A high number of unusual error messages occurring.

·         On screen text, graphics, pop-ups and dialogs become distorted or unreadable.

·         Hard disks, cd/dvd-drives or other hardware components can no longer be accessed.

·         Applications are no longer accessible with passwords when you have not changed the password.

·         Programs which worked properly before run slowly or do not run at all.

·         Your system becomes extremely slow or constantly freezes.

·         Your system crashes and reboots every few minutes or simply will no longer boot at all.

These are just some of the signs that your system may have been infected and every infection will cause different sets of problems or problems which may not be listed here.