Find That Infection & Fix It
an article by R Lipsky

An aspect of a good antivirus program is it's ability to notice 'virus-like activity', and it's ability to stop it, or just alert the user that it's occurring. If a virus that's not on the list of files to look for is trying to overwrite your entire hard disk, your antivirus utility should be able to pull the plug on that operation. Most antivirus programs do an adequate job of this. Where the differences lie is how these programs, that sit in the background and wait for virus-like activity, act. Some utilities take up more resources and processing power then others. For safety, it is imperative that these programs wait in the background. If your antivirus utility brings down the overall speed of your system then safety comes at a cost. For this author's purposes Norton Antivirus is used exclusively. It carries with it a very low footprint, yet does a good job at pointing out system behavior that is out of the ordinary, and may be a threat.

A separate way to judge the strengths and weaknesses of antivirus utilities is how well they remove the viruses that they may find. Most of the products on the market do an adequate to satisfactory job. Most of the antivirus utilities have the ability to scan files within zip files. They can also scan files within downloads or email attachments.

Most of the products try to fix the file back to its original form, or offer to quarantine the virus file so that your system cannot be affected by it. Quarantine is not necessarily a fix, but it will help to prevent further destructive forces, or spread of the virus. Unfortunately viruses evolve over time, and most of the newer ones almost always foil your utility's job of fixing the files that are infected. This is a problem. Further compounding the problem, most newer stealthy viruses are starting to knock out the antivirus utilities themselves. Speaking as a virus, this would be advantageous. If a utility is trying to kill me, if I kill it first, I win.

So, if antivirus utilities can't fix the problems they find, what do the average pc users do? Unless your utility finds a new, uncharted virus on your system, somebody else found it first. Most of the time the effects, and the steps needed to remove the virus are in some database on the internet. If you are lucky enough to find the virus and figure out what it does and how to get rid of it, your work has just started. If you are 'lucky enough' to get a simple virus you may only need to follow a few simple steps to rid your system of the culprit. You may be lucky enough, if it's a 'popular' virus, there may be a little utility tool to repair your system for you. If you are unlucky the number of steps needed to repair your system may take you through complicated steps such as messing around with your systems registry. The steps needed to complete the fix may be more complex and take more time then reinstalling the operating system itself, a complicated task in it's own right. At this point it may be time to admit defeat and consult a professional.

If you should need assistance eradicating bugs on your system click here and explain your problem on the message board ,
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...continued next month.

*Rich Lipsky is the owner and operator of ComputerHelp911.com, a local company that specializes in solving computer problems for local residents and businesses since 1995.
Rich is available for questions, or for
consultation. You can reach him at:

⁽³¹⁵⁾ 382 - HELP.