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Viruses

The most common problem our customers have is infections. There are two treatments we can apply to this:

1. Use anti-virus and anti-malware software to remove infected files from your computer.

This approach is cheaper and less intrusive, but it has two disadvantages. First, it usually takes longer; second, it is not possible to know for certain if every single virus has been found and removed. We use a variety of programs because no program is perfect; a virus that successfully hides from one program might not hide from another. Before running a program, we check to see if it is completely up-to-date. Then we scan with it and remove every infection it finds.

We recommend removing infections, not quarantining them. There is a chance that a virus may infect an important Windows file; in this case, removing the virus could leave the computer running poorly. In that case, re-installing Windows becomes necessary.

Our goal with this approach is for the computer to run well after each program has scanned, showing no infections. Some infections get so well established that they spread faster than they can be removed. Here, too, we fall back on re-installing Windows.

2. Re-install Windows on your PC, wiping out everything else on the computer, good and bad.

This guarantees that there is nothing bad left on your computer. If you take it home, plug it in, check your e-mail and find a virus, you can be sure that you got that virus from your e-mail. On the other hand, if you haven't practiced safe (and frequent) back-up, you may lose whatever important information is on your machine. See the next item, Saving files.