Whether you have learned your lesson from a past experience 
with a nasty computer virus or have been pressing your luck 
by surfing the web and downloading various files or opening 
those email messages sent to you by people you don’t know 
without any real understanding of just how vulnerable you 
really are each time you log onto your computer.

You now have the opportunity to discover what steps you can 
take to avoid such an annoying and many times destructive 
infestation. 
 


Listed below are some of the guidelines you can follow in 
order to keep those nasty viruses from making a mess out of 
your computer and your life. 

•Purchase and install a well respected antivirus software 
program and be sure to set it up so that it automatically 
runs when the computer starts up each time. 

•Make sure to keep your antivirus software up to date by 
either using the automatic update feature that many come 
with or make it a habit to manually check at least once or 
twice a week for updates on your own. 

•Set your antivirus program to scan for potential viruses 
each time you open a word-processing document like the ones 
that get sent through email. Viruses found in 
word-processing documents are called Macro Viruses. 

•When purchasing software make sure to only buy from 
vendors that are well known and from ones you trust. 


•Resist swapping data with the use of floppy disks or other 
mobile storage devices between various computers. If 
exchanging programs between computers is unavoidable just 
make sure to scan the storage device(s) for viruses before 
transferring data from one computer to the next. 

•If using floppy disks to transfer data make sure to format 
them before using them for the first time. 

•Never use pirated software. This is both illegal and a 
very good way to invite an unwanted computer virus. 

•When downloading software from the internet do so as 
little as possible. There are many neat programs available 
on the internet, but unfortunately there are many viruses 
that go along with them also. 

•If you must download programs from the internet ALWAYS 
scan them for viruses BEFORE opening them up to install on 
your computer. 

•Probably the most important and neglected method of 
disaster recovery are periodic backups of all important 
files found on your computer. Should a virus happen to get 
through your lines of defense you may need to replace the 
virus corrupted files with fresh ones that have been kept 
for such an occasion. 


Finally, it is not guaranteed that if you follow the above 
steps that you will not be the victim of a computer virus, 
but you can sure bet that if followed you will greatly 
reduce the chance of being an unsuspecting recipient of such 
an unwanted program.