HOW DO VIRUSES AFFECT YOUR PC Viruses will affect your PC in 4 different ways . . . 1) The Boot Sector: The boot sector is where your operating system files reside on your floppy or hard disk. A virus will go to that location on your disk and corrupt these files (IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM) so that your PC will NOT boot up as expected. EXAMPLE: the STONED virus. 2) The File Allocation Table: The File Allocation Table (FAT) is a list of all the files on your floppy or hard disk, and where the files are physically located on the disk. A virus will corrupt the FAT so that you cannot locate or access your files. EXAMPLE: the CASCADE virus. 3) The Partition Table: The partition table on your HARD DISK tells MS-DOS how big your hard disk is, and what percentage of it is used by MS-DOS. A virus can corrupt your partition table, which wipes out ALL of your files in an instant. EXAMPLE: the MICHELANGELO virus. 4) .COM and .EXE Files: Files with these extensions are EXECUTABLE files, which perform a specific action. A virus can attach itself to one of these kinds of files and corrupt the way it operates. EXAMPLE: the 4096 virus. 3 THINGS A GOOD VIRUS PROTECTION PROGRAM SHOULD DO 1) SCAN for viruses: A good program should be able to check your floppy and hard disks for viruses, as well as the RAM of your computer, and detect the presence of a virus in the 4 locations mentioned above. 2) CLEAN up the virus: A good program must be able to get rid of the virus it finds in any of the 4 places mentioned above; otherwise, its useless. 3) PROTECT YOU from viruses: A good program must have the ability to load a piece of the program into memory at boot-up time, to protect you from getting a virus in the first place. This type of program is called a Terminate-and-Stay-Resident (TSR) program. Good programs include McAfees SCAN, and F-Prot. Both of these are shareware programs, and are available from the instructor upon request.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 07:08:41 +0000
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