Viruses. Almost anyone who owns a computer is vulnerable to them. They form alliances with malware, the sneaky software that goes around your antivirus and disables it. They attack your computer where it is most vulnerable — its code. Most of the time, this malicious software is created by developers who have too much time on their hands and nothing better to do.
There are all kinds of viruses out there, from the Trojan that disguises itself as normal code from a normal website, to the most recent DNS Changer. No matter where it comes from or what it does, there is no doubt that acquiring a virus on your computer is almost always a death knell to your machine.
The DNS Changer virus is quite malicious. It was created by a company that wanted to re-route the web pages that internet users went to. Once the user was re-routed, the page they were taken to registered as an ad that had been clicked on. Each time one of these ads was “clicked on” the company that created the virus received a few cents worth of compensation.
The user had no control over where they went, because the virus was in the computer’s DNS code, meaning that the code that told the computer which website to go to had been changed. The FBI did catch on and eventually shut them down, but the damage had been done.
So, what can you do if you think that you have the DNS Changer virus? First of all, the chances of your having the virus and still continuing to have access to the internet are slim. Once the FBI shut down the company that was running the show, everyone infected with the virus was locked out of the internet. There was no code to tell the computer where to go, so it stopped going anywhere. However, if you think there is a chance that your computer is infected, there are a few things you can do.
- Wipe the hard drive: When you wipe the hard drive, you delete everything that has been added to it since you bought it. This means that the code which was replaced by the virus will be restored. This is a foolproof way of fixing the problem, but you do need to make sure that you back up all of the files you want to keep.
- Online tools: If you are averse to wiping your hard drive, you can try one of the following online programs: Avira DNS Repair Tool, Microsoft Safety Scannerm or McAfee Stinger. Make sure to put the program on a USB drive because otherwise you won’t be able to use it offline. Always run more than one program at a time to make sure that you get it all.
While it can be devastating for your computer to contract a virus, it does not have to make your computer completely unusable. Once one of the above steps has been chosen and carried out, your computer should be virus free and ready to go.
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