Advanced Computer Virus Safety Tricks Part 2

You'd find nothing out there for absolute protection against computer viruses. Keep in mind that knowing is the best way of protection. Try to learn stuff. This article is aimed to do just that. Hopefully this will educate you to become an advanced user and be able to shelter yourself from under-the-radar computer viruses as well as the threats they impose thereafter.

Advanced Computer Virus Safety Tricks Part 2 aims to cover undetected computer viruses with a step by step guide to manual detection and deletion. Herein, boot-scans and precautions with dealing infected "system-boot-files" are latterly argued.

Previous: Advanced Computer Virus Safety Tricks Part 1

How to Check if Malicious/Unknown Processes are Computer Virus Applications

The best way to know if a malicious process you found on Task Manager is to copy the "Image Name" and paste it into your Google search bar. Read on the definitions and forum topics concerning the image, if possible, ask people to be certain before deleting the actual file.

Terminating a malicious process does not delete the Computer Virus Application itself. If you've proven the application is a virus, locate it.

1. Open "Explorer.exe," that's any folder in Windows, and click on "Search." You could also click on an empty white space and hit F2 on your keyboard.

2. Click "All Files and Folders."

3. Input the image name. Leave the next field blank.

4. Select "Local Hard Drives" on the drop down list. Click Search. Wait for the list of matching image names to appear.

Note: Identifying the real location amongst the list requires preliminary knowledge and familiarity to image names.

5. Right-click the file. Then click on "Open Containing Folder."

How to Delete a Malicious File/Computer Virus Application

Easiest way of course is to right-click-delete, then empty the recycle bin. I could only bet you'd receive an "Access Denied" message, though.

For the knotty computer virus application files like these, it is imperative you use your antivirus softwares.

1. Either right-click the file and choose "Scan selected files with..." or open your scanner and drag-drop the malicious file for inspection.

2. Yet you've gotten yourself this far for just diagnosing computer virus applications your guards and scanners failed to detect, this virus must be tough. Don't expect that your scan would report anything now.

3. Some good virus-detection softwares have features to safely delete critical or elusive viruses. From here on though, I could not detail anything specific per software. Most likely, they will be scheduled to be deleted during system boot, which requires restarting your computer.

Note: If it still doesn't delete our very stubborn virus, log onto your hard-drive via another OS or computer, locate the file and delete it. There should be no access denied problem anymore, except that this method is tiresome.

Boot Scans and Computer Viruses

Now this type of scan is what every techno guy like me has in top two most bothersome tasks. Probably you, too. In order to do boot scans for our annoying computer viruses that managed its way to your Window's intestines, you have to restart your computer. With intestines I'm speaking of the system boot files and critical files located in your (do not tamper) C:\windows folder.

Any operating system has levels of processes from the most critical to minor, whereas our "system boot files" are the worst, poke it with your little finger it might just burst out and cry like a baby, or just render your computer unusable. So, where does our beloved computer virus come in?

Computer viruses also have levels where the most competitive can find its way to your "read-only" system boot files. After so, this computer virus will self attach and do the most damage to your computer. This computer virus didn't go through all the trouble to get to your belly for nothing. This might be a planted spyware, a very destructive virus for the main purpose of ruining your life, or just slowing your PC to death. It doesn't end there. Leave the computer virus be and over time if it didn't infect other files, your computer would not function at all.

Another annoying thing about good computer viruses is that they can even work with your antivirus and firewalls from the inside, meaning some tough computer viruses can disable your toughest firewalls and virus protection softwares. Theoretically speaking, no one's safe, it's only a matter of time before you catch worst. As you know, you've been only infected with computer viruses that are random to the internet, you haven't been targeted yet!

Targeted what? What do you think computer viruses are for anyway, they're not just there to do damage. Computer viruses are created by people who ought to get something, illegally by trade, out of infecting people, I mean, computers.

Let's get back to topic now and find out how this information could be useful. Let's do a little scenario.

Computer Virus Episode One

One sunny day you were surfing the net, and found something cool to download. You've done a "complete system scan" yesterday, but don't have a surf-guard running in the background today. You install this really cool program.

You've been using it for a few days now and nothing catastrophic has happened. However you do not know you've been already infected with computer virus because you've trusted your antivirus software so well.

Or maybe you've just thought that if you catch computer virus today, you'll just scan again Saturday.

What exactly happens that you didn't know is, you've stumbled yourself with a really dangerous computer virus that is either a) capable of overriding your computer virus protection programs or b) infecting your system boot files. What happens next?

A. The computer virus has done one or all of the following.

1. Computer virus has disabled your antivirus software.

2. Virus has corrupted your antivirus database.

3. Clever computer virus has added an exception for itself in your software's settings.

More about "Virus Exceptions" should be covered in the latter part of this article.

B. Your new virus friend had attached itself to one of your system boot files, and started degrading your system by the minute.

1. Now if you run your antivirus, and still detected our culprit here, it wouldn't be easy to delete it.

2. As stated earlier, you could detect but not delete viruses in your critical system files because those files are used to run your computer, gist, all your softwares.

3. If your antivirus tries to get its hands on system files, they'll get an access denied response and prompt you to restart your computer.

Boot Scans and Deleting System-Boot-Files

This case is one of the worst. Basically if your system boot files have been infected, you'd have a 50/50 chance that you'd eventually need to reformat your hard-drive. Boot scans are dangerous measures to undertake as well, by doing a boot scan you agree that if your antivirus found the culprit, it should be deleted. However, most viruses are deleted together with their host, kinda brutal don't you think? You'd be killed 'cause you have flu and might infect another.

If your antivirus doesn't have a copy of the system file it deleted, that becomes permanent damage to your computer. While sometimes it should seem as your computer has been cured, the damage done by the now dead computer virus is invisible to you.

In cases that a system boot file has been deleted together with a computer virus (happened to me a lot) your computer should have less functions as it had before. Sometimes you do things that needed to access your deleted system files you'll get one of the following;

1. A crash report.

2. A Microsoft error report, which is common.

3. Your computer restarts suddenly.

4. The whole system hangs.

5. You'll hear alarming beeps from the CPU as warning that a critical problem has occurred and the computer hangs.

6. You get a blue screen.

A blue screen is the worst to be expected from a computer virus.

Blue Screen

What's with screen and being blue?

A blue screen, well sometimes it's a black screen, is technically an indicator that you are now accessing your computers hardware read-only system files. Meaning, the objects you are dealing with could now belong to either your DOS (Disk Operating System) or CPU.

With blue screens, there's a chance we are compromising hardware devices, which cannot be fixed by a simple reformat and OS reinstall.

How do blue screens occur?

You'll get your very first blue screen after a serious damage has been done to your computer by a computer virus, like deletion of a system boot file. The first report you'll get is mostly a warning. Expect it to worsen over the days.

If you ignore blue-screen now, you should get another in the next couple of days, and then more frequent. Daily. Until it should happen consecutively with now critical system reports that say if you don't contact your computer dealer soon, you might have to replace your computer.

How to Fix Blue Screens

You will have to reformat your whole system to fix a blue screen. While some isolated cases should be solved by manually reprogramming the lost files, to do this you'd be required to have an extensive programming knowledge. See how far the computer virus has taken you?

Reformatting OS due to Computer Viruses

Perhaps you already know what a reformat is. It's the thing that your technician does to your PC to fix it for just $20.00. And to think that this process is as simple as gradeschool kids could do...

If you are running Microsoft, especially Windows Seven, it'd be easy to find your way to built-in reformatting tools such as "Disk Manager". However these only reformat logical drives and not the operating system, more on Logical Drives later. You cannot use these tools if you're solving a blue screen or a computer virus related damage that needs reformatting.

To reformat, you will need to access a black screen, which in cases of different operating system, the setup procedure also varies.

Sometime soon there'll be a link here of step-by-step installation guides per operating system. For now let's just think of this as a nuisance. Preventing blue screens due to computer viruses is the very reason you are reading this.

Ignorance of computer viruses and allowing your antivirus softwares to automatically handle them could lead you to as much trouble as mentioned above. Even if you have the best software, you will still get viruses.

In fact, the better the software you have installed, worse the damages computer viruses could do to your computer.

Intriguing idea, I know. But I'll cover the logic behind this on my next article, stay put for now guys.

Next: Advanced Computer Virus Safety Tricks Part 3