Does your computer have the flu?

    A computer can in fact get "sick" but not in the sense that most people would think of.  A computer being "sick" is referred to as a computer virus.  A virus is a program that attempts to forcefully insert itself into your computer, this is typically done by going to certain websites that will have a popup saying your computer has been infected.  If you download anything form that site, it will most likely be a virus and you have become prey to it.  There are many ways to protect yourself from virus's, first, the most important thing to do is use common sense when visiting websites.  Sadly people go to painfully obvious sites that are obviously populated by virus's, by using common sense you can decide not to go to these sites from emails, or pop-ups.  Secondly, install an anti-virus.  An anti-virus can be thought of as your computer's immune system, it helps to protect it from harmful programs. An anti-virus isn't guaranteed to stop everything but it helps immensely.



As seen in this video it helps to reinforce the points I previously stated,  by having the anti-virus it helped protect his computer from a potential virus because he went to a suspicious site and it attempted to infect his computer.
In the video he used an anti-virus named Norton, unlike him I use an anti-virus named Windows Security Essentials.  This anti-virus is made by the people who made Windows, so who better to program an anti-virus to protect your operating system,  than the people who made the operating system?  If it doesn't sound good already,  the best feature is that it is free to anyone that has a legitimate version of Windows.  I'm not saying that Norton, AVG and several other anti-virus's are bad, they still get the job done.  However I have had Norton and AVG and I see a drastic decrease in the  time spent when it scans your computer for threats, additionally it takes up less system memory when running idle int he background.


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Luckily your anti-virus isn't the end all be all for your computer. If you create a system restore point on your computer it will take a snapshot of what your computer is and then save that into a file. This file can be loaded and will revert your computer back to the time when the snapshot was taken. Instructions on how to setup a system restore can be seen in my following video. However if the virus does prove to much for you to handle you can take your computer to a professional or you can attach your hard-drive to a secondary computer and save your personal files and then reformat the computer. Also you could use a Live CD, which will allow you to run a operating system from a CD, which will allow you to safely transfer files.