If your computer is infected with a virus, formatting or erasing the hard drive and starting over often removes any virus. However, if backups of your computer were made and backed up the virus, your computer can be re-infected if not protected by an antivirus program.

If other drives or disks have a virus, or your computer connects to an infected network computer, your computer could be re-infected if not properly protected.

  • How to erase my hard drive and start over?
  • Is this file infected with spyware, virus, or other malware?
  • How to remove a virus and malware from my computer.
  • Computer virus help and support.