A computer virus is a type of malicious code that replicates itself and moves from one computer to a different one by having a network. They spread like an epidemic and infect other computers causing data loss and sluggish performance.

There are many ways for viruses to gain access to your pc some of which are downloading infected files and attachments from the internet, installing pirated and cracked programs, storage devices like flash drives, external hard drives and CD/DVD. These are merely a few ways a computer may be infected by a virus.

Any time a virus infects a computer it isn’t just the computer that is certainly infected that is definitely at risk, all the computers that are connected on same network may be infected. Danger increases manifold generally if the computers do not have an updated antivirus installed.

Many of the latest anti viruses offer an active shield program constructed into it. These shields monitor the incoming connections to your personal machine and scan them to detect any malicious code that might try to pass through and infect the computer. In addition they scan the websites you visit by monitoring the cookies and files that they install on your personal machine. But doing this would work only if the antivirus is updated and able to tackle any viruses.

If after all of this your personal computer has the misfortune to be infected by a virus you can try and get rid of it.
You need to run a complete virus scan on your laptop or computer rather than disturb it; it anyways runs in the background. Once the scan is completed the antivirus would present a report and allow you to know if your laptop is infected. If it is you can opt to quarantine the virus or delete it entirely. Quarantine means to isolate the file, as there is a chance that any other program requires the file to run.
You may as well tend to completely delete the file which is infected by the virus.

However there’s a new generation of viruses that can escape being detected even by an updated antivirus. These viruses pretend to be a file that is part of the operating system. These viruses might be detected by runningwhat is known as a boot time scan. A boot time scan runs ahead of the main system loads and thus can detect these viruses and delete them.

If these steps don’t work make sure you back up your entire important data and reformat the computer that involves totally wiping out the hard drive and reinstalling your operating system. Once this is achieved the first program that you can install is the antivirus and after that update both the operating system and the Antivirus. Be sure you scan the files you have backed up before transferring it back to your hard drive.