What is a Virus?
The term virus is usually applied to all forms of malware, even spyware and adware, though a virus, usually, isn't. A virus is a piece of code which replicates itself, unlike a trojan horse for example, by infecting files on your computer or by creating infected files. Viruses can do a lot of things to your computer, ranging from annoying, infecting all your files, to destructive, deleting your data.
Viruses can reside anywhere on your computer, including
- Macro's
- Scripts
- Executables (com, exe, bat, pif etc.)
- Boot sectors of disks, like floppy's
- The master boot sector of your harddrive
You get a virus the same way you get other malware, bad protection or unsafe surfing, to remove one, go here. And to prevent problems in the future go here.