Computer viruses are a significant danger for any computer that receives information from other computers via e-mail, the Internet or removable media. It's good practice to regularly check your hard drive for infection or your files may become corrupted and unusable. You should also disable macros if you don't use them in Microsoft Word or Excel.

Just as important as having virus-checking software is having the latest virus definition files. Virus definition files (sometimes referred to as DAT files) contain the data that your virus-checking program needs to find the latest viruses found.

Always scan anything you download from the Internet with anti-virus software before you use it. Also scan any of your e-mail attachments after you download them to your computer. Do not open any attachement regardless of sender or subject line unless you are confident as to the contents of the attachment. Many viruses spoof the sender and hide viruses under existing file names. Confirming the contents with the sender takes much less time than removing a virus.

If you've got a virus infection, don't panic. Launch VirusScan if it's not already launched. Click Clean to get rid of the virus. You may have to clean multiple files. Some viruses can damage files so that they are unusable. In this instance, your file is already beyond repair. VirusScan will disinfect the file, but may not be able to recover it.

McAfee for Windows, Unix and Mac can be downloaded from OIT.