Computer viruses

Computer viruses, worms and Trojan horses come in many forms and their significance can range from a minor irritation to a serious loss of data and system configuration. The best way to be safe against viruses is to take some precautionary measures and keep your computer up to date on Anti Virus software and Microsoft windows update.

How can you protect your computer against viruses?
Ensure you have a good Anti Virus installed on your computer with automatic updates turned on and that you have protected your computer against any vulnerabilities which have been notified by Microsoft. To do this select Windows Update from the Start menu and follow the instructions as they appear on the Microsoft Site. (You will require an Internet connection to do this.).

However, if your computer gets infected despite taking or not taking precautionary measures, there is a potential danger that you may lose some or all of your valuable data that may include your family pictures, word and excel files and good old emails and email addresses.

If you are not sure what to do under such circumstances, the best is not to do anything, give us a call and we will see what we can do for you. Chances are that you will not lose a single file, a family picture or an email if you call us on time. The worst you can do to your system is to continue trying different things on your PC without know what you are doing. The potential of losing your data is too much.

Norton Symantec is a leader in Anti virus protection and computer security and we recommend their latest Norton Internet Security 2005 to all of your our customers. Its a great piece of software and it protects your computer against of of the internet threats. Howver, there is no 100% guarantee that it will protect 100% of the time.

Only one anti-virus application should be installed on a computer. If you want to install Norton Anti-virus you should ensure that no other anti-virus application is installed.

General Guidance to prevent the spread of viruses

Do not send or open Word documents in DOC format, use Rich text format instead.

Do not send or open Excel spreadsheets in XLS format, use CSV instead.

Do not send program (EXE, COM etc.) files or launch any received.

Last but not the least, never forget to check the sender and the attached file. If its an unwanted file from an unknow sender, you never need to open it in the first place.