Dealing With Virus Infections on Pcs

In today’s world computers are affected by viruses and other malicious software on a regular basis.In many cases anti-virus software is able to block these attacks.The efficiency depends upon the presence of latest updates and capability of the anti virus software that is used.Keeping these things in mind allow me to describe an incident of virus infection and its solution.However let me tell you I’m not an expert.

A few days before my friend connected a pen drive to his pc.This scenario is a common experience for many.The only thing missing was that my friend had not updated his anti virus software for a couple of months. The anti virus software i.e. avast showed that the pen drive had a virus but could not do anything about it.

Personally I felt that the trojan was announcing its arrival.And in a matter of minutes the infection spread throughout the hard disk and also to his mobile phone.Now he could see that it was present on his pc because there were files and folders with names similar to his personal files.For example inside the movie folder there was a folder named movie which he had not created.

The first thing he had in mind was to get the offline updates for avast.This is a useful feature of many anti virus software;they allow one to download updates in an internet connected pc and use it in any other pc.

Eg:avast,avira

For a more comprehensive list please refer to this link:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Signatures-Updates/

He asked me to get the latest updates.Alongwith with the updates I took some virus cleaning and anti-malware software.Now you would be wondering what is a virus cleaner.Well it is free software made by all anti virus makers to remove specific viruses.Most of these are a part of my system rescue USB drive.Next let me take you through what I did step by step:

1.The first thing I tried was running Vipre Scanner.This detected a few viruses but the problem persisted.

2.I updated avast and went into safe mode.Here again I ran the vipre scanner but with similar results.

3.Next I tried a scan using avast.While scanning it told me that there many viruses present and advised a boot time scan.

The boot time scan is one of the best features of avast.Here avast will load before other softwares and windows components during startup and start a scan.This scan removed most of the malicious software present.

Note:The boot time scan is present in a few anti virus software only.

Source:List of antivirus software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The boot time scan also showed that the system restore points were affected.Thus doing a system restore does not work.

4.Then I booted into windows and saw that the viruses were deleted.But the control panel was not opening.I tried a system restore but that did not work.

5.I did a scan using Spybot S & D.To my relief it solved the issue.

Now I cant explain anything in detail.My purpose was to show what anyone can do in case of a virus infection.There are many more things that can be done depending upon the severity of the infection.