What to do when your pc is infected?

If you feel that you may be infected by a virus


If you know or you think you may be infected by a virus, you should solve this as quickly as possible because the infection can promote other infections on your PC and your system may crash (It is annoying when not being able to use your PC because Windows crashed). In fact, there are infections such as MSN infection where the virus itself sends links to MSN contacts and you can therefore infect their PC. Imagine also that the infection can affect your USB and you it to a friend, which will be a risk for him also.

Here's what you can do:

Detection

Have an online virus scan (requires Internet Explorer with ActiveX allowed), for example:

http://webscanner.kaspersky.com/
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
http://www.bitdefender.com/(Click on "Online Scan")
http://www.pandasecurity.com/activescan/index/
http://www.commandondemand.com/eval/cod/index.htm (compatible with IE only)

Note carefully the name of the virus (es) and name (s) of file (s) infected (s) but do not choose to remove the virus because some infections affect Windows files and so if you delete the file Windows infected files, you might crash the system.

Removal

Go to http://www.secuser.com/telechargement/desinfection.htm which contains a list of specialized utilities for removing a virus.


Locate the one that you, if it exists, download and run it.

Note that this link is a French website but the softwares to be downloaded is in English version.

Or go to the http://en.kioskea.net/telecharger/logiciel 4 security section.

Verification

In all cases, when you are finished, restart your computer and try again the online antivirus.

Update

Update your antivirus database (or install a new one if you have not already done! Download free antivirus in the site.

Firewall

Keep these worms from infiltrating the network, installing a personal firewall is more than recommended, even really important!

ZoneAlarm Firewall and Kerio Personal Firewall is free, easy to use!

Update operating system

Some viruses (worms) exploit vulnerabilities in applications or operating system, so it is essential to update it regularly (as often as possible). For Windows, this is Windows Update.

Link: http://update.microsoft.com