I have had a number of people call me recently to help recover from a virus attack or infestation. Most of the time, this is not a very pleasant customer call for me, as some of the recent viruses can be very destructive and there may be no recovery for many files on the customer's hard drive. This column is devoted to detailing what to do when a virus strikes.
The direction to take depends on your state of preparedness. First, let's assume that you are an aware computer user and have done many or all of the "right things" to do to prevent viruses. If you have done so, you probably have one of the two major computer anti-virus programs (McAfee or Norton) and have installed it correctly. You have set it up to automatically get virus definition updates (these often occur daily) and you schedule a full virus scan once a day. You also are doing regular backups, so you can recover any files deleted or infected.
In this case, you are probably in fairly good shape. Your anti-virus program will indicate to you that the virus attack has occurred; it will indicate what virus it is; and may even offer to quarantine the infected files or disinfect them. Even in the case where the anti-virus program itself cannot fix the problem, you may find specialized tools to do it on the vendor website. Running these programs should restore your computer or actually prevent the infestation if, for example, the virus came in e-mail.
As an alternative, you may be using one of the on-line virus checkers. I usually don't recommend these, as they are less accurate and take more time to run.
Now, on to the other case. If you do not have an anti-virus program on your computer, you will never know that the virus has hit. If it uses e-mail to spread (as most of them do), you have probably infected all of your friends and contacts by now. Your first indication of trouble was probably that a friend called you to tell you that you sent them a virus. Your friend, of course, has good virus protection.
Many viruses become more destructive over time. Obviously, they don't wipe out your hard drive right away (if so, they couldn't spread) - they are much more insidious. Critical files (both Windows itself or application files) will begin to fail. As time goes on, more and more files are infected. I have seen computers with hundreds or even thousands of files infected.
At this point, it's only a question of how much damage has been done. The first thing to do is to get an anti-virus program and install it. You can buy them at WalMart. But be aware that you might not be ABLE to install the program - some viruses are written to preclude you from doing this. Also, if you are running Windows 95, you may be in trouble. The recent versions of both Norton and McAfee do not support Windows 95 any longer.
Once you get the anti-virus program running, let it scan your hard drive and identify and/or fix the problems it finds. Download virus elimination tools from the vendor website if called for.
But, your computer files are now like Swiss cheese - there are lots of holes. Your only recourse may be to reload Windows (only AFTER making sure your hard drive is virus free). In more extreme cases, you would also have to reinstall all of your applications. Having to erase all your files and reformat your hard drive is a remote but distinct possibility.
So, now you have lost a lot of your files and perhaps a few friends. Take my advice - get that anti-virus program NOW!
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).