Allan Vest

Having just went through the effort to rid my laptop of a particularly nasty virus… I thought I’d share a few preventative steps anyone can use to help avoid computer viruses and make it easier to recover from one if your computer does get infected.

1. Install anti-virus software. For Windows, you can use the free version of Security Essentials on up to 10 PCs.
2. Install malware detection software. Do this before you get a virus in case the virus disables the ability to connect to the Internet and/or execute applications. I’m currently using the free version of Malware Bytes.
3. Make sure that “System Restore” functionality is enabled on your PC. You can check this by going to Control Panel -> System -> System Restore. Worse case scenario, you might need to restore your computer to a previous state if it gets infected in order to get things working again.
4. Make sure you are constantly updating your browser to the latest version.
5. Make sure you are regularly installing Windows Updates.
6. Make regular backups of your computer. I’m currently using an online backup service for this called JungleDisk. The service is fairly inexpensive compared to the alternative of losing everything.
7. Another great tool is HijackThis. This tool lets you take a snapshot of your computer settings and then if your computer gets infected, you can run it again to find out exactly what the virus has changed. The trick is to create the snapshot before your computer gets infected.