The next segment in the report is on how to combat computer viruses with the development of anti-virus applications.

The current status of microcomputer viruses will also be discussed, naming the most common types of viruses and the most harmful type at this present point in time.

Details of the most recent outbreaks of computer viruses, such as the "Melissa", "I Love You" and the most recent "Anna Kournikova" viruses will be explained, and why they are so harmful.

I will also give you my recommendations on how to combat this threat of computer viruses, what Anti-virus Applications that I believe should be used, and why updating your virus definitions for these programs on a regular basis is so vital and important in your quest to have a happy and uninfected computer.

And finally, I give you my conclusion in which I can only hope that you will find helpful.

A History Of Computer Viruses

The Current Status Of Microcomputer Viruses

The viruses "Stone" and "Internet Worm (MORRIS)" appeared in 1988. Stone was the first bootstrap-sector virus that infects the boot sector of a floppy disk. If the infected floppy was used as a boot disk, it then infected the master boot record. This meant that even if the whole hard-drive were formatted, it would still be infected. To get rid of the virus the master boot record had to be erased by using the utility called "FDISK" and loading the command "FDISK /MBR". The Internet Worm "Morris" infected over six thousand computers in the USA alone, which infected institutes such as NASA. The virus was spread by making unlimited copies of itself and infecting computers over a large network.

In the late 1960's through to the early 1970's, the program called "The Rabbit" was constantly appearing on the mainframes at the time. Kaspersky (www.avp.ch) "These programs cloned themselves, occupied system resources, thus lowering the productivity of the system". These viruses were only localised, as they did not spread from one system to another and are thought to have only been pranks or mistakes by programmers.

To be protected from the majority of harmful computer viruses, you need an Anti-virus Application of some description, with its virus definitions updated regularly for the best protection. I use a program called "Antiviral Toolkit Pro", and I personally believe it to be the most affective. It's virus definitions are updated daily, and a full working version with a thirty day evaluation license can be downloaded from "www.avp.ch". I also recommend that you should install more than one anti-viral application, as I have noticed that sometimes one program may detect a virus that the other may not, or even, one may do a better job disinfecting the infected files.

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Approximate Word count = 1868
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)