Internet books, magazines, and other publications may include information on shareware, freeware and public domain software available over the Internet. For example, the July 1996 issue of Computer Life included an article called Try Before You Buy , including their recommendations for available programs and games. Another place for that information is one of the many newsgroups or mail lists that discuss software. A virus becomes active and is often spread when an infected program is loaded into memory. While in memory, the virus infects programs that are subsequently executed.
Every disk has a boot sector.
The boot sector on the hard disk controls how your operating system starts when you turn on the computer. A boot infector replaces the disk's original boot sector with its own. Once the viral boot sector is read, it is loaded into memory where it may spread and inhibit system performance. Boot tables are stored on a diskette or hard drive and tell the computer how files are stored on the disk. A virus will change these files or move them somewhere else on the disk.