How not to get infected by a Virus. First scan all Emails coming in and out of your computer and update the Virus program weekly. Secondly do not Preview your Email in the Preview Pane, disabled it, right click the Email and go to Properties, then the Details Tab, then click the Message Source button, this works in Outlook Express, you cannot get infected by anything that way. If it looks questionable delete it and never open it up. If someone you know sends you an Attachment, Save it to the Desktop, right click on it and run a Virus Scan on it, before you open it. Also run a Virus Scan on the Computer once a month or if it is acting funny. The major reason folks get infected is because of opening Attachments to Emails, if you scan them with your Anti Virus program first, it will catch most Viruses and disable that Preview Pane, Viruses can be in HTML docs to. To find out how to Disable the Preview Pane go to the Computer Help Section and go to the Outlook Link. Happy Computing.

What is a Viruses? It is a small program that executes when you open it and installs itself on your computer. Just like when you buy legitimate software, you click Install and it installs itself in the registry and program folders. A virus does the same thing, only they try and trick you into installing it, without even knowing that it happened, unlike legitimate software, virus software does not display the fact that it is installing software to your harddrive. Until your Computer starts acting funny, you will not be aware of it running, unless you check certain utilities regularly or run an Anti Virus program in the background. Just be careful, never download a "You need this Special Player to see this," it is a virus program, unless you are downloading from a legitimate site, then yes download it. But still Save it to somewhere on your harddrive and then Scan it with your anti virus software, before you install it. Some sites like MS, Sun Java and Macromedia Flash player, will install from their site, they are legitimate.

I received a virus to other day and it made me realize how important it is to have your E-mail Virus Scan on and updated. I received the W95.Hybris.gen Worm Virus. It came with another E-mail and was called Snow white and the seven dwarfs. Norton caught it before it did anything. Here is a link to Symantec Anti Virus Research Center for information on Viruses and Repair Tools. There is a new service on line, tried it with my sons Computer, it found three Viruses and it deleted them, it is called House Call by Trend Micro's, check it out !! Also check Symantec Online Virus Checker Virus Checker.

When the worm attachment is executed, the WSOCK32.DLL file will be modified or replaced. This will give the worm the ability to attach itself to all outbound email. The email attachment will have a random name but the filename extension is either EXE or SCR). The worm attempts to connect to the newsgroup alt.comp.virus. After it connects successfully, the worm uploads its own plug-ins in an encrypted form to this newsgroup. It goes through the subject header of the messages, and tries to match a specific format. The subject header will also specify the version number of the attached plug-in if these plug-ins are indeed present. If a newer version of plug-ins is found, the worm downloads these modules and updates its behavior. For example, there are known modules that give the worm ability to infect compressed files like ZIP. If WSOCK32.DLL is being used by the system, the worm will be unable to modify this file. Thus, in this situation, the worm will add a registry key to one of the following subtrees:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce

It will always alternate between these two trees mentioned above as the worm spreads from one machine to another. The worm hooks on the following exports on WSOCK32.DLL: send(), recv(), connect(). Whenever a user sends out an email to a person, the worm will also send out another email to the same person attaching a copy of itself using a randomly generated filename.

Use Norton Antivirus to repair the infected WSOCK32.DLL. Other files detected as W95.Hybris contain only the virus body and must be deleted

Some people E-mailed me after they had scanned their system and thought they had fixed this virus, it wasn't fixed, because with some viruses you have to manually correct some files. If you noticed with the W32.Sircam.Worm below, you need to edit the registry after Norton fixes it. So, make sure you have your E-Mail Antivirus scan on all the time and update it weekly, this is where you are most likely to get a virus now days. As you can see, your regular virus program can not always correct the problems the viruses create. Prevention is your best weapon, I only run the E-Mail scan and manually run a scan once every two weeks or so and I update, every Saturday morning. The reason I do not run my Virus program full time, is because it creates shut down problems, slows my Computer, interferes with my games and isn't really needed, IF, you scan downloads and scan your Emails. If the kids are on the Computer all the time, leave it on and set it to automatically download updates.

I was infected by this Virus 7/20/01 I opened a .doc file attached to an Email. I did not know I was infected until Zone Alarm asked if the SIRC32.exe could connect to the Internet, I clicked NO and opened Norton Antivirus, updated the Virus Definitions and ran a Scan, sure enough, it found it. Norton fixed it, but I could no longer get into any of my programs, I had to Edit the Registry through MS-DOS using regedit and deleted some entries before the Virus and it's effects were totally fixed. Here is a link to Symantec Info and Repair of this Virus W32.Sir

I recently downloaded a file from the Net and Scanned it with Norton Antivirus, before I opened it. It was infected with the js.Trojan Horse Worm. Norton took care of it, so I was not infected. But if I hadn't right clicked on the file and had Norton Scan it, I would have been infected. The Email Scan is a must, but always Scan downloaded files before you open them, save them in a special folder, I call mine downloads, then I open a new folder inside that folder for each file I download and keep those Virus Definitions Updated Weekly. Be careful with some files you download, check the Extension on the file before you download it, let say you are downloading a .mpeg make sure it is great.mpeg if it is great.mpeg.vbs or great.mpeg.exe that is a virus, don't even download it, if it has an extra extension like .doc .vbs .scr .exe I would avoid it.

The newest form of infection is called Spyware. Some are just cookies that track where you go on the Web and are not really to malicious. But then there are others that will Hijack your Home page, track sensitive information. What can you do about these little pests, here is how I handle them.

First I use a Free ( I like Free: ) ) program called Adaware, it scans your system and deletes these nasty little programs, you can get it here.

Next I use another Free program called Spybot and you can get it free here.

I also use a program that is also Free, to check to see if there have been any additions to my Registry that I was not aware of, that is called RegCleaner, you can get that here.

If you run these regularly, you can keep those pest at bay, you get spyware from Web sites, so the more surfing you do the more spyware you get.