For a virus or a similar program to have an effect much it takes to be able to spread from one machine to another. They are specific to certain parts of the computer system that allows computers to communicate with other access. Below is a discussion of some of the most common methods.
Boot infectors
Each disk (hard disk, floppy disk, CD, DVD) contains a boot sector, if there is a bootable floppy disk or not. If a computer is turned on, it looks for boot information. If the computer finds a disk with boot information, it reads this information and uses it well to boot. If for some reason the boot information that is infected by a virus, the virus is activated and can be transferred to the hard drive of your computer (if the infection was on a CD).
Once the boot code on the hard drive is infected the virus will have to be loaded into the memory of your computer every time you restart your computer. From memory the boot virus can be any disk that is plugged into the computer to travel. To spread the infection.
Most boot virus can cause a long time without problems, easy to spread by force there. Often, these viruses are designed to enable their bad behavior on a particular date (Halloween, for example). There are bad boot sector virus that destroy the boot information or force will enter a complete formatting the hard drive immediately after a computer.
Infectors program
When an infected application is run, the virus is activated and loaded into memory. Although the virus in memory is a new program file that you can do become infected. This means that there are more and more applications on your system that may be infected. Multiple infections are very common and certainly problems of the system.
Program files may function without problems for a while, but eventually they will have problems or multiple infection brings the entire computer system. The data of the program product may be an early sign of infection such as saving files without proper names, or incorrect / incomplete data are stored.
The viruses of this kind are often designed for programs that share information between users / computers such as e-mail applications, screen savers, macros, see Office documents, and self-extracting compressed files.
By attaching to e-mail
Most of the most dangerous viruses are primarily spread through e-mail attachments – files that are sent by e-mail can be. In these cases, the user of an infected computer without the knowledge, attaches an infected file, e-mail, the e-mail sent to a friend or colleague. If the message is received, the virus is launched when the attachment is opened, thus infecting a new computer. The e-mails with animations, automated greeting cards, jokes, photos, tables and files of documents are all documented to contain virus files.
More and more frequently these days to the mass mailing or e-mail viruses are released. These attacks automatically in files on your computer for e-mail, he can find, then use your e-mail application automatically send infected messages to any e-mail in any file on your computer (and not only the files E-mail message).
It is important to know, e-mails you open, make sure they do not contain harmful viruses. Even e-mails from friends and family can be a virus when the computer is infected person. This is an anti-virus software would be really useful to detect when an incoming virus in all messages.