Virus Prevention

I get at least 2 - 3 virus removals a week. Often times, it's very straight forward; scan for viruses, find viruses, remove viruses. Granted, that is over simplifying the tasks that it takes to physically neutralize the threats, but in it's simplest terms, that's how it done. However, if I were to never run diagnostics on the hardware, about one third of the virus removals would be coming back soon with other issues.

The first step I take when working on a computer is running diagnostics on all the hardware. It takes roughly 24 hours to run all the tests, but that way you know you're getting a complete computer repair. I begin by testing the Motherboard, CPU and a quick test of the Hard Drive. If all these tests pass, I move on to a long Hard Drive test. Often times, this is where I find out if I will be doing the virus removal or not. If the long Hard Drive test reports any failures, it would not make sense to continue. Granted, some failures can be resolved by running chkdsk, but most drives reporting failure are truly failing. At this point, depending upon the age of the system and what the customer is using the computer for currently and plans to use it for in the future, I will recommend either a Hard Drive replacement and an operating system reinstallation with data backup or computer replacement.

If the long Hard Drive test passes, I will begin running a thorough test on the physical memory. Sometimes, issues that appear to be virus related, can actually be issues with the physical memory that is installed. If the memory tests pass, I will look start to look at the motherboard for any physical damage. If everything looks ok, I will start the computer and boot into windows to begin the virus scan.

The point of this is that without doing a complete computer diagnostic on all the hardware, you can never really be certain that you're getting a complete repair. I am doing FREE diagnostics on the hardware so I recommend taking advantage of that!

Thanks for reading!

Justin Vail
Dog On Fire