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It is not always easy to determine if you have
a virus.
In past times, before the advent of the internet, viruses
spread through floppy disks, and CDs etc. Their ability to
remain undiscovered until it's too late determined the success
of that virus. Minimum exposure meant it could spread further
without getting discovered, and only then through the damage
it caused.
Once the internet, email and instant messaging came along,
the priorities of the virus writers changed. Now rather then
subtly spread from victim to victim, the idea is for maximum
effect of the 'payload' as it were. By the time the virus
has finished running, the computer owner knew they had been
infected with something, as well as everyone else on their
network, or in their address book etc.
The more subtle viruses offer some characteristics
to watch out for, these are -
| 1 |
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Computer becomes unresponsive preventing you from
doing anything. Processor is at 100% trying to spread the virus
(Task Manager). |
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| 2 |
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Hard disk becoming very busy when you're not doing
anything… continually and for no apparent reason. However
please be aware that some applications operate in the background
sometimes causing erratic disk access. |
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The computer tries to dial up to the internet…
continually and for no apparent reason. This is not noticeable
if the computer is on a network, generally network traffic shoots
up and is noticed on the PC which accesses the internet. |
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Unexpected things happen when you are using the
computer. Crashing applications, strange files appearing, disk
space reducing very fast etc. |
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You are getting strange messages appearing, messages
you would not expect. For example an error reporting a sound
card driver error, when you know you have a completely different
card in your PC. Or an error with an application which has run
fine till then. |
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