Are You Infected? - Dealing with a Computer Virus

If your computer has recently suddenly become sluggish or unstable you may have fallen victim to some form of computer virus. These can come in many forms and from many sources, and with as many different purposes as well.

The first step is to determine if you even have a virus. There are any number of reasons you could be experiencing problems so to eliminate the other options you should run a virus scanner of some sort. There are a large number of these available.

Some of the virus scanners are also capable of removing the virus at the same time. Products from established anti-virus brands such as Symantec and McAfee typically do this. There are products from these companies that can also actively monitor your system to help protect you from viruses. These pieces of software do cost money however, and you may not be willing to run out and purchase a potentially expensive software suite if you don't know you need it for sure yet.

Thankfully for our pocketbooks there are a number of free virus scanners on the web. These may or may not be as up to date as commercial packages so be sure to check the websites for when they were last updated. If a scanners information is too far out of date it can prove to be of little use as it won't catch the most recently created viruses. Here Google is your friend, if you find that the one you found or have been using is out of date you can find the more popular, and probably newer, one easily. Just searching for free virus scanner will more than likely yield acceptable results.

One free virus scanner is available from a company called Trend Micro. HouseCall is their frequently updated scanner that can be run directly from your browser. This scanner supports all major operating systems working with Windows, Linux, and OS X. To give it a try point your web browser to http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ currently Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are supported.

Grisoft also offers a virus scanning package that is free and supports both Windows and Linux. Offering the AVG trio of programs to protect your system from viruses, malware, and rootkits. These packages don't run from the web browser so require a small download before they can be installed. Grisoft also offers more extensive commercial security software. The free anti virus program and other software are available from http://free.grisoft.com

With any luck you will find the source of your computers performance problems and be able to correct them easily. Even if nothing has turned up it is a good idea to repeat this process regularly to be sure that your system is not compromised.

If there were no viruses on your system and you are still having performance problems it may be an idea to look into other culprits. Programs such as spyware and other malware can also cause noticeable degradation in performance.