Many folks see viruses as a horrible little bug that somehow managed to sneak its way into their computer while going about online activity. While this is slightly realistic, the vast majority of viruses should not be feared or even given a second thought about.

Little is it known that as a matter of fact, a HUGE majority of 'viruses' are not actually viruses but in fact 'SpyWare', 'MalWare', or 'Ad-Ware' which can do all manner of things, some spyware processes much more threatening than others. True Viruses are programs that can take control of a certain aspect of your PC/Laptop/Mac etc.

A terrific tool for getting rid of all manner of spyware and viruses alike is Ad-Aware Personal edition which can easily be found on Download.com for free. Ad-Aware shows all found spyware and viruses in an easy to understand fashion, and as an added perk, lets you quarantine them and understand which ones are the worst to let you know just what these dangerous programs are up to. Some viruses will disable Ad-Aware. Yikes. When something THIS threatening occurs, try running your PC or other windows device in Safe mode and then running ad-aware. If this STILL does not work, try other spyware removal programs and if all else fails, see a professional.

(For those who do not know what safe mode is, it's a version of windows software already installed on all windows machines that allow windows to run in minimum requirements mode. This can be accessed by tapping F8 or F2, depending on your machine, repeatedly during computer boot-up/start-up)

There are of course, alternate ways of finding viruses. Open your task manager (Control+Alt+Delete) and click on the 'Processes' Tab. Look for any suspicious activity such as:
*Over-use of memory
*Over-use of CPU percentage

Once you locate such a suspicious process, find out where it is located by typing the process name into a windows search. Once the search is complete, go to where the program is located and ...
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT

DELETE IT ONLY IF YOU ARE SURE IT IS NOT AN IMPORTANT SYSTEM FILE. IF THE PROCESS IS IN YOUR SYSTEM32 IT MAY OR MAY NOT BE EITHER A IMPORTANT SYSTEM FILE OR A VIRUS/SPYWARE PROCESS. IF YOU ARE UNSURE, CONSULT YOUR BEST FRIEND, WWW.GOOGLE.COM!

Otherwise, this should do the trick. If you have any further questions on this matter, consult microsoft.com and the ad-aware help/user manual section of the program for details on safe mode, the task manager, or the ad-aware personal edition program.

Hopefully this helps, and happy Virus/Ad-ware hunting!

Learn more about this author, Dominic Pompo.
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