What harm can a virus do to your computer

Depending on your disk you may have to reinstall drivers as well so make sure you have that sorted. Now comes the painful bit. You will need to reinstall all your programmes from the web or any disks you may have. You will also need to visit the Microsoft Updates site to bring all software up to date.

This can entail several visits and a lot of time depending how old your PC is. Next replace your documents from the external to your PC. At this stage I usually run CCleaner to get rid of rubbish but that is just my preferance.

We can date this and it is your day one image. It is better than your manufacturers CD because it is up to date and contains your present programmes. You can delete the initial Disk image if you wish as that is of your old system. Now you can use your PC and if you get an infection just restore from your external. In order to keep up to date I make a note of any changes I make to my system and a keep this on a notepad document in My Documents. After say a month I will put the previous Disk Image on after moving that note pad document to the external along with any other updated files.

When the month old disk image is in place I will apply all the changes I made in that month[with the help of the word pad ] update my security products and then take another disk image for use a month down the line.

This way I believe I minimise software rot and I always have a recent clean disk image to fall back on. Yes, it does entail some work but it gives great peace of mind. Never again will you be left with vital System 32 files in quarantine and wondering what to do! I have a Sony Viao with Windows xp prof, and a few months ago my wife downloaded a update, so she thought, for Adobe Flashplayer Well I have lost all my configurations, accounts and I couldnt even run a scan.

I tried to fix it by repairing and the computer will function like its supposed to for min afterward, then it blinks and all my configurations and functions are gone again. Do I need to start all over? I have my recovery disk for windows but do not have one for the drivers. Also if I can back anything up can the virus hide in anything I do and reappear? Thankyou for any help you can give me, this has been a real pain!!!!! I had a virus on my computer similar to the one mentioned.

It told me my disc was damaged and the usual give us your Card details and we will fix it! The screen was black and very little worked it seemed all was lost.

Then I remembered the computer was split into family names I went on my sons name and Started Ad aware and Windows Defender they both found malaware and deleted it a restart was required. On restarting I went for a systems restore to a previous week. It worked wonders the Virus has now gone and all things on my own name are working. Lucky I had two users on the machine or it would have been hard work knowing what to do. I received an E mail from a known sender which contained a link to what I thought was a website to look a wedding pictures.

I have access to internet explorer,but I lost all of other programs and my hard drive is damaged. The computer is about 6 years old. Can a hard drive be fixed or is some damage beyound repair? How did this happen? How did I get a fake e mail? I had no idea it was not from the known sender. However Yahoo filters them into the spam folder where I can look at them without opening them.

Better safe than sorry. Only download from trusted sources and even then scan it with a good virus scanner. I use Norton Insight! I think I have a bad virus. A few days ago I was at Facebook. Yesterday my hard drive started failing and it would not allow me to reinstall Win XP and gave a message that it was unable to format my hard drive. I have two copies of Win XP and neither worked. A failure may be imminent.

Preventing computer viruses from infecting your computer starts with situational awareness. By staying on the lookout for phishing attacks and avoiding suspicious links and attachments, consumers can largely avoid most malware threats. Regarding email attachments and embedded links, even if the sender is someone you know: viruses have been known to hijack Outlook contact lists on infected computers and send virus laden attachments to friends, family and coworkers, the Melissa virus being a perfect example.

A simple call or text message can save you a lot of trouble. Next, invest in good cybersecurity software. Antivirus AV refers to early forms of cybersecurity software focused on stopping computer viruses. Just viruses. Given a choice between traditional AV with limited threat detection technology and modern anti-malware with all the bells and whistles, invest in anti-malware and rest easy at night.

As mentioned previously in this piece, traditional AV solutions rely on signature-based detection. AV scans your computer and compares each and every file against a database of known viruses that functions a lot like a criminal database. Going back to our virus analogy one final time—removing a virus from your body requires a healthy immune system. Same for your computer. A good anti-malware program is like having a healthy immune system.

The free version of Malwarebytes is a good place to start if you know or suspect your computer has a virus. Available for Windows and Mac, the free version of Malwarebytes will scan for malware infections and clean them up after the fact. Get a free premium trial of Malwarebytes for Windows or Malwarebytes for Mac to stop infections before they start.

You can also try our Android and iOS apps free to protect your smartphones and tablets. All the tactics and techniques employed by cybercriminals creating modern malware were first seen in early viruses. Things like Trojans, ransomware, and polymorphic code. These all came from early computer viruses. To understand the threat landscape of today, we need to peer back through time and look at the viruses of yesteryear. Other notable firsts—Elk Cloner was the first virus to spread via detachable storage media it wrote itself to any floppy disk inserted into the computer.

But a Scientific American article let the virus out of the lab. In the piece, author and computer scientist A. Dewdney shared the details of an exciting new computer game of his creation called Core War.

In the game, computer programs vie for control of a virtual computer. The game was essentially a battle arena where computer programmers could pit their viral creations against each other. For two dollars Dewdney would send detailed instructions for setting up your own Core War battles within the confines of a virtual computer.

What would happen if a battle program was taken out of the virtual computer and placed on a real computer system? In a follow-up article for Scientific American, Dewdney shared a letter from two Italian readers who were inspired by their experience with Core War to create a real virus on the Apple II. The brainchild of Pakistani brothers and software engineers, Basit and Amjad Farooq, Brain acted like an early form of copyright protection, stopping people from pirating their heart monitoring software.

Other than guilt tripping victims in to paying for their pirated software, Brain had no harmful effects. BHP also has the distinction of being the first stealth virus; that is, a virus that avoids detection by hiding the changes it makes to a target system and its files.

The cover image depicted viruses as cute, googly eyed cartoon insects crawling all over a desktop computer.

Up to this point, computer viruses were relatively harmless. At the same time, Trojans continue to evolve. Here are three examples. They can also impact your mobile devices, including cell phones and tablets.

In general, a Trojan comes attached to what looks like a legitimate program. In reality, it is a fake version of the app, loaded up with malware. Cybercriminals will usually place them on unofficial and pirate app markets for unsuspecting users to download. In addition, these apps can also steal information from your device, and generate revenue by sending premium SMS texts.

One form of Trojan malware has targeted Android devices specifically. The result? Cybercriminals could redirect traffic on the Wi-Fi-connected devices and use it to commit various crimes.

Trojans take their name from the hollow wooden horse that the Greeks hid inside of during the Trojan War.

The Trojans, thinking the horse was a gift, opened their walled city to accept it, allowing the Greeks to come out of hiding at night to attack the sleeping Trojans. All rights reserved. Firefox is a trademark of Mozilla Foundation.

App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Alexa and all related logos are trademarks of Amazon. Microsoft and the Window logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U. The Android robot is reproduced or modified from work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.

Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. No one can prevent all identity theft or cybercrime. Not all products, services and features are available on all devices or operating systems.

System requirement information on norton. The number of supported devices allowed under your plan are primarily for personal or household use only. Not for commercial use. Please login to the portal to review if you can add additional information for monitoring purposes. Security Center Malware What is a Trojan?

In recent years, cybercriminals have increasingly been using viruses to target businesses , healthcare organizations, and governments. Despite this trend, computer viruses still remain a major cybersecurity threat to personal computer users. They can be extremely destructive and often destroy data or seriously damage computers. For these reasons, computer users need to be aware of this malware threat and take action to protect their devices from viruses.

I have spent my savings. I have even got phones not in my name with different Google accounts, but they control my phone settings, steal my data and my home wifi. I went months without a phone, because the stress caused heart problems. I had to take my kids phones because of this. A full return to factory settings on your devices could help as well, although without knowing how exactly the attacker keeps getting access to your devices this is a mere guess. Perhaps the articles in the cybercrime and malware sections of our website could give you some further ideas.

All the best of luck! This webpage was by far one of the most interesting and informative sites I have been on in a long time!!! Thanks guys for all the information and links. Happy surfing. By: Tove Marks Reading time: 7 minutes Update: What is a Computer Virus? It is usually difficult to remove and often requires the entire hard drive to be reformatted. Overwrite Virus: A virus that infects your files and destroys them.

The only way to remove it is to delete all the infected files, which results in the loss of data contained in them. Overwrite viruses most commonly spread through emails. It can then be activated when your operating system performs certain functions. Since these viruses hide in your RAM, they often go undetected by antivirus software. File-Infecting Virus: A virus that overwrites or inserts infected code into executable files. When the infected file is opened, the virus overwrites or destroys it.