What is a computer virus?

Sometimes the term "virus" is misused. Some people tend to use the word "virus" to refer to anything undesirable that can happen to a computer, but this is not completely accurate. Viruses are short programs that are not accidental. Someone, somewhere, has purposely designed them, usually with malicious intent. It is usually copied and passed along many times before it reveals its existence. "A virus is any program that reproduces itself by using the resources of your computer without your knowledge or consent."

A virus just copies itself and spreads. A virus cannot move by itself, it must attach itself to another program. Viruses may be written to multiply, to damage other programs, or to alter data.

There are many different kinds of viruses. Viruses come in a wide variety. They are often small and well hidden, therefore difficult to find. Some are slow while others are fast. Some take days, weeks, months or years before they start damaging a computer. They may be benign and result only in amusement or mere annoyance, or they can be malignant and malicious.

How does a virus work?

The first step of a virus is to initialize the computer. It remains hidden and tries to gain control from the operating system. The next step is for the virus to set up virus processing and modifies the system to support virus control. Then the virus wants to find available hosts. Its job is to seek new receptive hosts and determine if they are available for infection. They want to infect as many systems as possible. They infect the system by attaching themselves to the host. They moderate their infection activities to reduce the risk of being found. This is when a virus officially begins its destruction of a system. A virus wants to determine if it is time to activate. This depends on a number of things. It needs to know the preset number of infections, the elapse time in the system, the preset data or time, and other external events which have occurred. Depending on these factors the virus determines if it should be destructive at this time or if it should wait. At the end the computer is usually unaware of the infection.

Basically all a virus does is live in a host program. Each time the host program is executed, so is the virus. When the virus is executed, it seeks at least one other program to which it can copy itself. This is why a virus is constantly spreading.

Here are some very helpful links to aid you in virus protection on your home, work, school computer systems.
You can purchase the software from the following links as well as upgrade to new versions from exsisting version you may already own.   Just Click the pictures to go to there web sites.