|
tranfree issue 32 - 31st May 2001
Computer Viruses: Tips For Defense And CombatPart 2 of 2by Mary Maloof Combat - if you think you have a virus1) When you think you have a virus, first of all, try not to panic. With the exception of some particularly dreadful types that do reformat or damage your hard drive, many viruses just make certain programs crash or create annoying quirks in them, and do not damage your hard drive. They make relatively small changes to particular entries in your Windows registry, and these changes can be reversed with a little bit of careful typing. If you are infected with a virus, chances are it will only be the type that is extremely annoying to you (or to others who receive e-mails from you), but does not do permanent damage to your PC. 2) If you know where the virus came from (that is, if you clicked on an attachment and you know without a doubt that the virus came from that attachment), go to Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center (http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/) and look for information on the attachment. The information will usually contain step-by-step instructions on how to undo the changes that the virus made to the entries in your Windows registry. Frequently, SARC also makes various tools and patches available, depending on the type of virus involved. 3) If you don't know where the virus came from, scan your entire system with your antivirus software, checking all scan options to make sure that nothing in your system is left untouched. If your software has been updated on a regular basis, chances are that the software will recognize the virus, remove it, and make corrections to the system. 4) If your antivirus software does not resolve the problem, your system may need nothing more than a thorough defragging (defragmenting). Approximately 75% of crashes are caused not by bugs or viruses, but from not defragging your system! Defragging your hard drive once every week or so will help your programs run faster and better, and crash far less often. Defrag ESPECIALLY before you install new software, after you go through a major cleanup of your files, or whenever you notice that your system isn't working very well. Go to... Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter
...and follow the directions. By the way, make sure to close down ALL your programs. To do this, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, and a list of open programs will pop up. Pick the first program on the list, hit Close, then hit Ctrl-Alt-Del again and go through the same procedure with all of your open programs, closing down ALL of them except Explorer and Systray. Then, turn off your screen saver. To do this, go to Start > Settings > Control Panel and click on the Display icon. Then, click on the Screen Saver tab. Select the [None] option, then click on Apply and close out the window. Once you have finished defragging and have restarted your computer, you can use the same procedure to restore your screen saver. Using the Disk Cleanup and ScanDisk utilities are also good ways to keep your system running efficiently and prevent crashing. Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup (for Disk Cleanup) or Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > ScanDisk (for ScanDisk) and follow the directions. It's good to run these programs about once a week, like the Disk Defragmenter. 5) If defragging does not seem to help and your programs keep crashing, perhaps there are too many programs in the startup menu. This means that your computer opens up too many programs automatically at startup (a common problem, since many programs stick themselves into the startup menu when you install them). If too many programs are open at once, they tend to "fight" with each other and can cause one another to crash - especially if you have two antivirus programs running at once, which is never a good idea. Refer to the Microsoft website www.microsoft.com for detailed explanation of how to remove unnecessary items from your startup menu in Windows 95/98/Me. Mary C. Maloof is a certified Spanish > English translator who
resides in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. She is the founder
and moderator of "SpTranslators," an Internet mailing list for
Spanish translators, founder and moderator of "Legaltranslators,"
an Internet mailing list for legal translators, director of The
American Web for International Languages, a worldwide job
referrals network for translators and interpreters, and owner of
Maloof Language Services, Inc., which offers a wide range of
translation and interpretation services. For more information
about her work, please contact her at
mmaloof@sprintmail.com
tranfree 21 contains more tips on safe computing...
|
