A friend has recieved and opened a virus which is now on her computer. I'm not sure what one it is but it is making her computer run very slow. She had no current virus protection.

What should she do now?

I think first your friend should try to find out the name of the virus. When she knows the name, go to this McAfee site for example and search their library for the remedy. Then just follow the instructions.
If she cannot find out the name of the virus, try googling the name of the file she opened.
Hope this helps.

I was going to say to take two aspirins and go to bed with a hot drink but I realise that you are talking about a computer nasty.

Buy some anti-virus as soon as possible! If I remember correctly when I bought my last one, it comes with instructions of what to do BEFORE you install it if you think your computer is already infected .

If everything else fails, ask her to contact me. I have experience in removing these things from computers.

A combination (or even individually) can solve the problem permanently...


Warhammer, Mace, Long Sword, Bastard Sword, Short Sword, Dagger, Flail, Morningstar, Bow & Arrow, Crossbow, Halberd, Scythe, Polearm, Spear.

Thanks Jay, very kind of you! I will get on to her and give her the option. She is our neighbour so has the same problems about getting into shops to see about it.

Sue, suppose she could try to put the aspirin on the CD tray!

That reminds me of the grapes. A few years back I had a computer which gave me considerable grief and several times I had to take it to the engineers to be fixed. I used to drop it off unannounced and it could be several days before they fixed it, this particular time it got to Thursday without any news and not liking to nag them I decided on a different approach in the hopes of having it back for the weekend.

I bought a large bag of grapes and took them to the shop, told the salemen that I had brought my computer some grapes and could they give them to it and tell it that I missed it and hoped it would be better soon. There was stunned silence then one of the salesmen said he just had to see their faces in the engineering section when he told them. He came back laughing his head off and said that it was having its operation in the morning and would be ready for discharge late afternoon... see it worked!

Next time it broke they told me to stop stuffing grapes in the floppy drive.

LOL !

Copago, in the interim, tell your neighbour to leave the machine running. I got caught a few years back, and the only saving grace was I left the machine running when I gave up and went to bed -- the virus was waiting to attack on a reboot. SG, is that still the case today?

Yeah, that's partially right. If it's a Trojan virus in particular, shutting the computer down is the worst thing you could do for the really nasty ones. They will lie in wait, and once rebooting, will eat the system in one. The only option then is a full format and reinstall.
They can be removed however, but it's not easy.

You can always try pouring some chicken soup into the cd drive... If all else fails, of course.;)

If your friend can access it then try checkerhttp://security.symantec.com/ssc/home.asp?j=1&langid=us&venid=sym&plfid=20&pkj=RKPWYNBRFNJSVSTIVVB
It's free and will check out the system, find the virus and kill it on line (All I can say is it worked for me when I got one I wasn't covered for and have now the full package which is regularly updated)