Natalie Dormer

A virus is a malicious piece of software designed to get into your computer via the Internet or some type of removable media. Viruses are created to damage your computer full stop. Viruses can infect, delete and corrupt data on your computer. Viruses can even be designed with the sole purpose of crashing entire networks. This is why it is important to keep your computer free of viruses - even one can spell bad news for you.

One of the most common ways that a virus gets onto your computer system is through e-mails. Many people open e-mails from people they don't know. This is especially risky if the e-mail has an attachment. The majority of the time these attachments are in fact viruses or worms. Once you open the e-mail the virus is then active on your computer and it will try to reproduce itself and spread further. Usually it will target your e-mail address book and start sending copies of itself there. You must always scan attachments with an anti-virus program before opening them on your computer.

Floppy disks were a very common way for viruses to get spread around. This doesn't really happen so much anymore because very few computers actually use floppy drives now. The threat now is from small portable drives like USB flash drives that can act as virus carriers just like the old floppy disks used to. One USB flash drive with a virus on it is enough to bring an entire network crashing to its knees so be careful about allowing people to connect flash drives to your computer.

The main thing you need to keep yourself free from viruses is a solid and reliable anti-virus program. You have two choices here - free or paid. If you're stuck for cash then something like Avast or AVG will do a very good job at keeping your PC free from virus threats - these programs are surprisingly good for being free. If you have about $30 to spare then invest in something like Norton, McAfee or Panda anti-virus - these are all very capable virus killers.

Once your have an anti-virus program installed on your PC then make sure you run a full scan and let it check every single file on your computer. This could take a few hours but at least you'll know your computer is virus free.

A virus scanner on its own isn't enough anymore so make sure you have a decent firewall installed too. The version shipped with Windows is OK but you'd be much better off with something like Zonealarm (free) or Comodo (free) for total protection.

Last but not least keep your Windows up to date. Microsoft are constantly releasing new security patches for their operating systems so make sure your version of Windows is completely up-to-date. You'd be surprised at how many headaches this can save you.