So, you’ve installed a virus protection such as Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus or Mcafee’s VirusScan. Now these programs do a pretty good job by themselves and you now may think you are safe from all viruses, but unfortunately, that is not the case.  In order to stay safe, you must follow these few guidelines to keep your computer virus free now and into the future:

• First of all, keep your virus definitions up to date.  By downloading these updates, your anti-virus software can recognize and quarantine new viruses. Usually anti-virus programs give you a year’s subscriptions to download.  Many anti-virus programs contain auto-update features that will grab the latest files whenever a new one is posted to the internet, but it is still a good idea to keep an eye on your program to make sure it is recent. To get these new definitions, either run Live Update for Norton users or download the superdat file to keep McAfee updated.  If you plan on purchasing anti-virus software in the near future, we recommend Norton Antivirus 2002 as the auto-update feature seems to work the best out of all the ones we've tried. Norton Anti-virus 2002 is also the program we use at Green Apple to scan customers machines when they come in with virus infestations.

• Second, run a complete virus scan at least once a week.  Most anti-virus software will come with this option preset for some obscure hour on a weekend. If you do not leave your machine alone for any particular length of time or do not keep it on overnight, it is possible it will not do the scan automatically. If it does not start by itself, there should be some means for the program to initiate a manual user controlled scan. The time the scan takes to complete depends on the other programs running, the speed of the machine and the amount of files on the hard drive. It is usually best to shut down all unnecessary programs before you start the scan and leave the machine be as it is not best to run anything as unless you have a fairly fast machine, it will bog everything down quite considerably.

• Lastly, do not open any email attachments that seem suspicious or unwanted. Doing this will thwart most of the viruses you will actually see in the wild. Almost all virus spread via email and are only infected once the attachment is executed.  To execute an attachment, some require you to actually open the attachment and others automatically infect once the email is selected.  For Outlook and Outlook Express users, one prevention method is to off the “preview pane”.  To do so, click, View -> Layout… -> Then uncheck the box that is titled “Show Preview Pane” by clicking it or uncheck Preview Pane from the view pull down menu. What this will do is prevent the message from automatically running in the preview window which therefore prevents any onload code to run, any possible attachments from being accessed, and for spam prevention, lets you skip looking at images and text you may not wanted to see. To view your message, double click on it in your message list.