symtoms of virus ?

Question

wat are the symtoms of a virus affected machine? and the steps needed to apply..thanks in advance

Answer 1

Symptoms of Virus Infection

There is usually no simple way to know when you have a virus. I should rephrase this: some viruses exhibit behavior that tell you immediately that they are on your system, but so many viruses mimic other system problems that it is most accurate to say "there is usually no way to rule out a virus as a possible cause of strange software or system behavior on your PC".

Virus writers are usually pranksters whose software is normally designed to avoid detection, and to cause mischief. Both of these mean that viruses are designed to mimic natural processes in your PC so that you don't think you have an infection. They often make your system behave in strange ways, but in strange ways that could also be the result of an application bug, driver glitch, or even a hardware problem. For example, a virus can make strange things print on the screen--but so can a driver problem, or a bad BIOS setting. A virus can make the system spontaneously reboot--but so can a bad power supply, or an operating system problem, or an overheating processor.

Since viruses are so common, and they can exhibit so many strange types of behavior, and so many of these behaviors are similar to other, real hardware and software problems, I always recommend a virus scan as the first step in troubleshooting a hardware or software problem. Until virus infection has been cleared as a potential source of problems, it doesn't make much sense to look for a real hardware or software cause. For example, many symptoms of resource conflicts are similar to the symptoms of virus infection. The following are the sorts of problems that are usually real system or component problems, but can also be a result of virus trickery (this list is not exhaustive; virus writers are very creative):

Spontaneous system reboots.
System crashes/hangups.
Application crashes.
Sound problems with the speaker or sound card.
Seemingly random glitches on the screen.
Corrupted hard disk data.
Partitions that seem to "disappear".
System slowdowns.
Hard disks that won't boot.
There are some types of strange system behavior that hint much more strongly that a virus is around and responsible for the problem. Seeing any of the following types of behavior on your system should send you scrambling for your clean antivirus boot disks, as they are not normally caused by legitimate hardware or software problems:

Strange Messages: If you boot your PC some day and are greeted with the message "Your PC is now Stoned!", then you can bet your booties that you have a virus. Oddball messages on the screen usually are viruses (although some real system messages are kind of strange too, such as "No ROM BASIC - System Halted").
Odd Text Games: If you type at the command prompt in DOS and the letters start moving around on the screen in strange patterns, or each letter you type is changing to a random color, or ASCII graphics move around the screen "eating" other characters, or anything strange like that, chances are high that you have a virus.
Music and Strange Sounds: Viruses have been known to generate music or odd tones on the system speaker.
Changing File Sizes or Time/Date Stamps: File-infector viruses commonly increase the size of files that they infect, and some can affect date/time stamps as well. There is normally no ordinary reason for an executable file to increase in size (unless you apply a patch to the program or something similar.) Time/date stamps are more easily changed, but still normally remain static over the life of a program.
Disappearing Files: If you used a program yesterday and now it isn't there any more, and you're sure that you didn't delete it, a virus may have deleted it for you.
Well u can get avast antivirus and avira antivirus both free.. 1st one from avast.com and the 2nd one from free-av.com

Answer 2

The first answer above has been copied from http://www.pcguide.com/care/data/virus/scan_Symptoms.htm and that means that person who copied and pasted it doesn't know about viruses.

When a "Virus" runs it is included in current memory. These processes run and eat resources like crazy. If your computer is very slow or appears to be using internet resources while your not doing anything on the internet, you may want to sweep the task manager for suspicoius running processes. Hit Control- ALT-Delete once. Bring up Task Manager, then tab over to Running Process. If a process that you can not identify as legitamate is using resources (indicated by %) then right click on it and end the process. Write down the name of the process and find that file in the System32 folder in the Windows Folder on the root of you C:/ drive. And delete it.

John
A+ Certified

Answer 3

Symptoms as far as I know and in many cases:

1. The computer will get slower and slower (as the virus/worm will make many copies of itself).

2. The computer will restart on its own at random times or when doing a particular thing, like opening a program or trying to open the internet, whatever.

3. Hard disk problems might occur if bad blocks are created by the virus, such as it won't respond as expected (doesn't read or write).

4. Sometimes virus signs are visible by the virus itself, like strange pop-up warnings or whatever, and if your antivirus is always disabled.. doubt doubt doubt, and try to get it enabled.

How to overcome:

1. Update your antivirus before making a complete system scan on all your local hard-drives, C: D: E:, etc.

2. If you are unable to scan while on Windows, then try scanning from Safe Mode (you can do that by pressing F8 several times at startup, and then choosing Safe Mode).

3. Again if scanning your complete system did not work, then enter a normal Windows session and try to make a backup virus protection start-up disk, this feature is provided by many antivirus products, search for it.

4. If the complete system scan failed to remove the viruses, then switch to another antivirus, the following are the good ones I believe are powerful.

A) Norton Antivirus
B) McAfee Antivirus
C) Panda Antivirus (I recommend you to get the trial version of this program whenever you have a serious virus you're unable to disinfect, and it will also remove spyware. It is my favorite backup antivirus).

side note: You can also attempt to make free online virus scan offered by these product companies, for free. Most of them will not remove your viruses, just detect it but at least you will be sure you have a virus.

Free ones:
A) AVG Antivirus (my choice)
B) Avast Antivirus
C) Bitdefender Antivirus (no real time protection but it's good if you want a daily one scan scheduled without all day resource hogging).

Answer 4

quite a lot but u can notice sinificant low system resource even u r running normal program or application

Answer 5

Slow computer, default options disabled, limitations, faulty programs, files are manipulated without your permission.

Answer 6

scan ur comp with the avg scanner its a very good anti virus program..

http://www.grisoft.com/doc/downloads-products/lng/us/tpl/tpl01?prd=avw