If when you turn the computer on it locks up in POST for longer than 30seconds you have a virus. This is basically a BIOS orientated bug that sits in the Master Boot Record of your hard drive.
If however your computer boots up fine and then freezes, you have a virus. This time you're faced with a more insidious kind of bug, a worm. This bug hides in plain site and is impossible to remove short of a complete and utter reformat of your system.
However if your computer boots up fine and appears to run properly until you decide to go online where you find yourself faced with innumerable pop-ups, computer freeze, browser freeze or even a system crash dispite you having a running anti-virus program, you have a virus. This virus is browser based and can be as innocent as that toolbar at the the top of the window.
Other less obvious symptoms include:- Computer slowdowns,
files being deleted without your knowledge, e-mail accounts being used without your consent, files being created then being mysteriously moved about, your Outlook Express program is writing memos to some mysterious sender, your computer settings get readjusted without your intervention, the computer takes longer than usual to shutdown, some mysterious program constantly running in the background hogging resources, a file you send is reported as not being sent, you keep getting a mysterious e-mail in your Outlook despite having an onlilne e-mail account. You're browser goes where you don't want it to go and gets stuck whenever you try to close it. There are many more symptoms of virus infections and all are potentially dangerous. You're best off with having all your e-mail accounts online and using a browser other than Internet Explorer since this browser is reknown for security vulnerabilities which have yet to be fixed.
Another step to take is to apply for online storage of your most critical information including your passwords and usernames and investing in good anti-virus software. Don't download anti-virus software. Buy the CD and install from that. It will update automatically during the install.
But if your computer is infected then you will have to do a complete install of the operating system as running anti-virus scanners will not get rid of the problem. Just make sure you format the hard drive first. And don't just pop the CD in and click install. Do a DOS format and then install.


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