Responding to and Recovering from a Virus

Does your computer system seem to run slower than it should? Does it crash often and display error messagesyou don't recognize? Playmusical tunes you've never heard before? If your computer acts like it's inhabited by ghosts, you may have a computer virus or some kind of spyware.

On the other hand, anunhealthy or overloaded system could cause some of these same problems — particularly sluggish performance. Your hard drive could just be running out of space, or you could haveinsufficient memory resources for the applications you're running.

So how do you tell the difference between a virus and a system problem? Generally speaking, if you notice sudden, unexpected behavior, like strange sounds coming from your computer or file names you don't recognize, you probably have a virus.

If you think you've contracted a computer virus, you have several options:

• Run antivirus software
• Replace files
• Run a disk-repair utility
• Reformat your drive