If Your Computer Becomes Infected If you have reason to believe that your computer has become infected with a virus, do not panic. Contact Computer Services immediately. Do not use the infected computer or disk until someone from the Computer Services Department has checked it and eliminated the virus for you. Computer Viruses are computer programs, created by people, which take control of your computer without your knowledge. They can affect your computer files and disks, and often replicate themselves.
Computer viruses can be destructive or non-destructive.
Destructive viruses perform harmful operations such as deleting files, scrambling information, or introducing errors into documents. These types of viruses often make files, and even entire disks, unusable. Non-destructive viruses may do things such as display a message or picture on your screen. When a floppy disk becomes infected, any computer into which that disk is placed may also become infected. When an infected program is run, any drive on which it is run will become infected.