Vista and the viruses

The virus has been the scourge of the personal computing world for as long as most of us can remember. It is destructive, it is pointless, it is annoying and costly. No one likes losing their data and being out of commission, even for a few days.

It can cause hours of backlog re-doing missed work and thousands to replace your system.

In a previous posting we explored what you can do to protect your Vista system and to prevent your system from viruses and other similar nastiness.

I am going to assume that you have the proper protections on your system and this happened through no fault of your own.

Maybe you let on irresponsible friend, you know that one with no common sense, use your computer and they opened an email attachment or your kid decides that it was a great money saving trick to get all the movies he wants on Limewire.

No matter how it happened if you have a virus now you're going to have to do something about it.

Of course, this assumes that you can get access to the system in general. Some viruses will affect your ability to get through the boot and if you can't turn on your computer you can't fix it. Game over, get your system to a repair shop.

If you can boot up, however, you might have a shot at saving your system on your own.

First and foremost you are going to back up any documents that you need to keep and any audio or video files that you know to be safe. This means nothing from any illegal download sites or things you got from an email.

You have two practical options:
1. If you can get online you can use a file storage service if you have one. This may require a great deal of patience on your port if your system is slow, which is likely to be the case with a virus.

2. You can move your files to a removable storage drive such as a USB thumb drive. This can be quicker but you have to have the drive on hand.

Now that you are all backed up we're going to do what we can for our injured patient. Your first instinct is to go right to the virus scan, isn't it?

Hold on for a second and instead clean up a bit.

Remove your music and video files, all of them as well as document. You've backed up the important stuff already, remember.

Then you'll uninstall any unimportant programs you got online that might be causing the problem. Finally empty the trash.

Now that we've eliminated both potential sources of the virus places it might hide in, and lessened the number of files that the computer has to search we can begin the hunt.

Now, run your virus scan. You might just get lucky and if you do then your virus scan software, which you have been updating the definitions regularly (if not then you'll want to do that before you run the scan) then you could find the virus, that is if you didn't delete it already, if you wait the virus is there and you can do some simple research on how to fix the issue, unless your virus scan has a self repair feature.

If you don't find the virus right away don't despair. You may have just deleted it when you went on that deleting spree. Shut down your computer and then give it a full restart. This will show you the truth. Look for the signs that the virus is still lurking on your system.

These will be the same signs that initially clued you in to the fact that you had a virus in the first place. Be watchful, this may take awhile so be patient.

If, and only if you are 100% sure that you have the necessary technical skills and you are willing to under take the serious risks that go along with it you can try to use your operating system disk to repair or re-install your operating system. If you're unsure about this either. Send your PC to a professional repair service or call the Microsoft Help Desk

Katie Gatto is an experienced technology blogger, and technophile, who uses both the Mac and Windows systems to manage her online life. She has a M.S. in Information Systems and a B.A. in English.

She has written for several technology sites and writes for a wide range of technology users. From showing Mac users helpful freeware on MacApper, to helping people be more productive through web-ware on AppMag, talking about open source technology on the Alternate Systems blog, she has covered all of the major operating systems.

You can visit her personal blog, Convergent Streams, which covers many lifestyle and perspective issues for dwellers of the computer age, about how to make the most of your life.

Vista Girl Articles

Thursday May 29th 2008: Vista and the Viruses

Thursday May 22nd 2008: My Vista wishlist

Thursday May 15th 2008: Let it be free, software for Windows Vista

Thursday May 8th 2008: Getting your Vista half off

Friday May 2nd 2008: Windows Vista and Spyware