Bugged !

My colleague passed some files via her pen drive and I noticed the explorer was acting a bit funny but I carried on and copied the file. Then my lappy decided to restart itself. Funny, but I went with it.

As soon as I got logged in, I knew there was something wrong with my
laptop. It took me a second to realize that it was infected with some
kind of virus. The most annoying part of the entire episode was not
being able to work when I was supposed to work on something damn
important. On XP, my explorer kept crashing. It really frustrated me
for some time. Playing with it for sometime made me realize that my
personal computer was in bad shape.

I scanned my entire system to find only few infections which dint
seem to me as potential trouble makers. So I went ahead and tried a
newer version of my antivirus.

Downloaded -> Installed -> Scanned -> Cleaned. My lappy was
moved from ICU to GENERAL ward. Then I checked some settings and did
some tweaks to bring my PC back to life. I started trusting antiviruses
again

I could get my PC back in shape without formatting my system or reinstalling XP and hence I could save few hours reinstalling everything

It was then that I thought of writing this post. I just hope that
these things will help you avoid at least few reinstalls / fresh
installs.

So before you go for a reinstall / fresh install, try these and see if it comes handy.

1. Make sure you have an antivirus installed. System scan takes time but should be performed sometimes. Your WINDOWS partition should be given preference for scanning. Try Avast, they have the latest virus DBs. But please remember to diable the Outlook integration, it tends to crash Outlook 2007.

2. If
you come across any weird activity (slow system / popups / explorer
related issues), the first place to check should be startup programs.
You can see the list by typing “msconfig”
in windows run dialog box. If you see entries which you had never
installed, disable them and restart to check if that helps. If it does
then you need to remove those programs. Uninstall / Delete the
installed folder.

3. Try logging in Safe Mode
to check if the system remains stable. If it remains stable, try
uninstalling recently installed programs. If not, then you might be
required to start from scratch, format and reinstall windows.

4. Try running some registry cleaners.
Sometimes viruses create links in registry to get executed every time
with system startup. Most AV programs take care of this now.

5. Do Ctrl+Alt+Del
to check the running programs and system. Kill the unwanted processes.
Check for processes that reappear with windows startup but were never
installed or meant to be there.

6. Keep your Antivirus updated.

7. Avoid using unscanned pendrives.

8. Keep cleaning/deleting your internet history / cookies.

9. And above all, always keep a backup of your important stuff.

There are many helpful articles on the net that could / would /should help you out on some specific problem.

As long as we have PCs, we have OSs, we
will keep getting infected. The problem is not infection though. The
issue stays with us. Our ignorance leads to situations that make things
move out of our hands.

So go get an antivirus (ur techie friends should be able to help you with it) and be prepared.