Unfortunately the Internet is like the “Wild West” when it comes to computer safety, privacy, and data security. Many computers become infected with malware such as viruses and spyware by viewing email attachments, sharing files, or by visiting infected websites. Some viruses are meant to scam you out of money, steal your identity, or even convert your computer into a network node for illegal activity. Your computer could be hacked into a phishing websites, an email spam server, or part of a network for transferring illegal content across the Internet without your knowledge. If you use the Microsoft Windows operating system then you are probably all too familiar with computer viruses, and have probably even gotten one in the past that may have caused damage to your computer. However recently computer viruses have been found that infect other operating systems such as Mac OS and Android.
You may notice your computer has a virus because it seems to run really slow, is showing pop-ups, appears to be using an Internet proxy, or has seemingly pointless software programs launched. However you could be unaware that your computer is infected with a virus, as some viruses run “silently” in the background acting as a node in a larger distributed bot network attempting malicious tasks such as denial of service DOS attacks. It is important to check your computer periodically for viruses and if you are using Microsoft Windows to to have an active anti-virus software running with up-to-date virus definitions as well as running Microsoft Windows updates to have the most up to date security patches.
South City Computer can sometimes remove virus, trojans, worms, and spyware from infected dekstops,laptops, tablets, and phones. Depending on the severity of the malware infections it may be possible for our technicians to remove a virus from your computer without affecting the rest of your computer and without any data loss. However some computer viruses can do too much damage to the registry and system files that it is beyond a simple virus removal. Viruses can even infect or corrupt your computer’s restore partition making it impossible to recover your computer to the factory default settings without restore CD media. It is important that you create your own restore media for your computer when it is new in case your recovery partition gets infected or corrupted by a computer virus.
The Microsoft recommended way to remove a virus from an infected computer is to perform a full operating system restore to reset the computer back to the factory defaults using a recovery partition or restore media. Most computers have a recovery partition on the hard drive that can be accessed using a series of key strokes during boot or by using the Windows Boot Option Menu available by holding shift and choosing to restart the computer. A recovery partition is sometimes the only way to recover most computers.
In order to remove a virus from an infected computer the South City Computer technician will back up all of your important user data (if possible and requested), and perform a complete operating system re-installation to restore your computer back to the manufacturer default factory settings to ensure the virus has been removed completely. All previously installed programs such as Microsoft Word will have been lost and will need to be reinstalled at this time.
If your computer’s recovery partition has been infected with a virus and you do not have your restore media South City Computer can usually order your factory restore media for you at an additional cost, and it can add some extra time to the overall computer repair.