The Security Mentor

Skydivers have an all-purpose piece of advice about midair emergencies. No matter what goes wrong, their standard wisdom is "don't get there in the first place".

That's good advice for virus infections. Keep your Windows installation patched, update your antivirus software regularly, and don't run strange software. Also, look in the help for your antivirus program for how to create "rescue disks".

Once you get a virus, you're lucky if your antivirus software can remove it. Today's viruses are starting to turn off antivirus software and prevent you from getting fixes on the Web. But it's worth trying.

Plan B is to reboot your computer from the "rescue disks" you made earlier. That way the virus code doesn't get a chance to run and interfere with your fixing your computer. But you still might not get everything.

Some pessimists suggest that the only safe thing to do is to save as much data as you can, erase your hard disk, and reinstall everything. The problem is that you're almost certain to lose data. I don't want to give in to despair, but one of those pessimists is highly qualified. Microsoft's Dr. Jesper M. Johansson is a CISSP like me and argues that your only safety is to use scorched earth tactics. He makes a virus infection sound like that scene from the movie Aliens where Ripley suggests "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. That's the only way to be sure."

Software engineer Terry Gliedt also believes the nuke-it-from-orbit philosophy. I think his advice may be a little overstated but he's good at describing everything you need to do step by step.