Just as in a human all sorts of ailments crop up when affected by an attack of virus, so it does for a computer, with an attack of computer viruses. The ailments of the human are, to a greater extent, more complicated than that of the affected computer, but then, the computer is not as complicated a piece of machinery as a human. However, an ailment is always nasty, and for proper and continued functioning of the machinery, the attacking virus has to be expunged from the system as early as possible, to keep the computer clean.

An attack of virus or malware, as it is also known, can destroy the hard disk, or corrupt data, or spy on you, or hand over the control of your system to another person. However, there is no reason for anxiety. There is no need to assume that the whole hard disk is to be wiped clean. When trying to clean the computer, there may be some data loss. But, you may not necessarily lose all the data.

First and foremost, it must be ascertained if you really have an attack of computer virus. Some vital symptoms are sluggishness of operation, inability to access files, browser going off to an unrecognizable site, etc. On the other hand, the hard disks may spin unnecessarily; your computer may act strange or may even lock up.

If you suspect an attack of computer virus, the best process would be to run anti-virus software to clean the computer. Some viruses are clever enough to stop anti-virus software from functioning. For such cases, running the anti-virus from a CD/DVD or a flash drive may be necessary. Investing in good anti-virus software and keeping it enabled in your system always, is prudent.

At this point, it may seem that if anti-virus software is so good, why not have two? This may not be a good idea, since anti-virus software uses up quite a bit of computing power, and two of them might slow your system down to a crawl. Also, most anti-virus programs are not mutually compatible and one may claim the other to be a computer virus!

Anti-virus software is an unavoidable requirement if you are using a Windows Operating System. Good and safe habits can help avoid computer virus attacks, but then people who make their living writing computer virus programs, are always on the lookout to finding new methods of attacking computers. There are several of the security tool virus removal programs available in the market. While some are free to use, others have to be purchased. Most of the free programs will not have the entire capability of the purchased versions.

With the anti-virus software, you will have a choice to select for cleaning up a computer if a virus is discovered. This may range from deleting the infected file, to quarantine it in a safe place, to try and repair the file. The best option would be in a sequential manner to try to repair the file, if possible. Failing this, to quarantine the file for a later try at cleaning it, and ultimately, if all else fails, to delete it from the system.

As we used computers in almost everywhere in our daily lives, many of us would like to keep our computer safe and keep running with maximum performance. Making computers clean and running with best performance is not difficult if you follow these tips:

1- Update your anti-virus software. Make sure that your computer is installed with a good anti-virus software to be less vulnerable for the viruses.
2- Keep your operating system up-to-date. Operating systems such as Windows often releases new security updates, better scripts to make sure that computers are safer to operate. To update your operating system, you can adjust your computer to update itself automatically. If you are running something very important, you can manually update your operating system to prevent the data loss.
3- Use anti-spyware software. Using a good anti-virus software is not enough to keep computer safe. You may need an anti-spyware software to detect and remove spywares, malwares and any malicious softwares for you.
4- Regularly delete temporary files that you download from internet. Every time you visit a webpage, your computer downloads the web pages and the files from the websites in order to display the site. Some of those files might be malicious your operating system, so it is important to clean the temporary files occasionally.
5- Check that website is safe to visit. Every time you search about something on the internet, search engines list the relevant websites and warn that some of those websites may contain malicious files and can harm your computer. It is important to pay attention the remarks from the search engines.
6- Uninstall the programs that you don’t use. Whenever you install a program, it creates a registry and uses some spaces in the hard disk. It may also tries to reload itself during the start-up so, it is important to uninstall the programs that you don’t use.
7- Be selective when you download a software from internet. It is a good rule of thumb you need to be wise when you download software from the internet. Especially using softwares without a license is a crime and you can have a trouble if you are caught. You can visit Cnet or download.com to make sure that the software has the good reputation among the other users.
8- Defrag your hard drive in every 6 months. Defragment is a process where the data on the disk is merged to a specific region in the disk and it allows the computer run faster. It is recommended to do a defragment at least in every 6 months.
9- Add more RAM if necessary. For better performance, it is always good to have more RAM in the computer. More RAM, the computer runs faster.
10- Cancel some of the extra features of the operating system that you think it is not necessary. It is possible to choose your operating system run faster instead of better visualization. With this way, you can have a better performance from the computer.
For better computer tips and suggestions, you can visit CleanPC.org for more information.