A surefire way to ruin your day is to get a virus infection in your operating system. Even the mildest virus infection can burn hours off your work schedule. If your system is unprotected, that is, if you didn’t install any anti-virus software on it, you’ll probably spend a lot of time trying to clean out your hard disk, weed your corrupted files from ones you can still recover, and check on other computers which you have probably infected through unprotected file transfers.

 

 What to do when you have a virus infection is so much simpler if you’ve already installed an anti-virus shield before using your computer. Just run regular virus scans, retrieve a list of viral infections in your system, quarantine these infections, and delete them. If you haven’t installed one yet, there’s no need to panic. Below is a guide on what to do when you have a virus infection wreaking havoc on your OS.

 

Install one and save what you can save

in your OS. Unless you’re already looking at the “blue screen of death”, there’s no need for you to wipe out your hard disk and re-install your operating system. You can still recover uninfected data by installing a reputable anti-virus program on your computer. This is the first thing anyone wondering what to do when you have a virus infection on your computer should do. The second step is, of course, running a virus scan.

 

This will let you retrieve the list of virus infections invading your computer. The first virus scan will always take long, especially if you’ve been surfing the internet without a virus shield for a long time. Most likely, your system is already jammed with several viruses. Once you’ve retrieved the list, quarantine and delete all of them. You may lose some data especially if you’re already experiencing system crashes prior to your virus removal. Once you’ve removed the infection, create a back up of all of the files in your computer. Go offline after cleaning out the virus in your system to make sure that the back-up disk you’re creating is clean.

Precautions

You wouldn’t even have to worry about what to do when you have a virus infection in your computer if you took pains preventing viral infections. Better than wondering what to do when you have a virus infection is thinking of ways never to let them into your system at all. Virus infection prevention doesn’t just stop at installing an anti-virus software program. You have to update the software, too, to make sure that you’re getting real time shields. New viral infections are produced almost every day. You should also be very careful about your surfing habits. Do not browse pages that are questionable.

 

Websites with malicious content include game downloading stations and sites with pornographic content. Whenever you check your email, avoid opening messages from people you do not know. Sometimes you don’t even have to click on links to be infected with a virus, you just need to open the email or the attachment that comes with the email. Last but not the least, be cautious about your online banking transactions. Do not click on any suspicious buttons unless you’re sure that it was put there by the bank itself. Some hackers plant foil buttons on actual bank websites tricking clients into running dangerous spywares on their systems.