Recovery

From the onset of a viral infection, these malicious codes begin to make their presence felt in many ways. Most often, this comes in the form of reduced efficiency, erroneous data storage and retrieval, corruption of data files, operating systems and application software. This is usually the worst way of detecting a virus attack for all the damage has already been done.

Such drastic measures, however, are not necessary on most occasions. It is much healthier to remove the virus code and leaving behind a usable file and/or boot area simply by applying any of the commercially available anti-virus packages. Most responses to viruses are after all, technical responses. The same anti-virus software packages have both detection and repair capabilities. These tools employ many of the same techniques to identify and remove viruses that were used to detect viral material as it attempted to introduce itself into the system.
However, these programmes are often unable to remove all viruses once the infection occurs. This is a function of both the virus design, and the nature of the anti-virus software. Hence, this reminds us of the grim fact that prevention is better than cure!