Viruses will affect your PC in 4 different ways . . .
1) The Boot Sector: The boot sector is where your operating system files reside on your floppy
or hard disk. A virus will go to that location on your disk and corrupt these
files (IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM) so that your PC will
NOT boot up as expected.
EXAMPLE: the STONED virus.
2) The File Allocation Table: The File Allocation Table (FAT) is a list of all the files on your floppy or
hard disk, and where the files are physically located on the disk. A virus
will corrupt the FAT so that you cannot locate or access your files.
EXAMPLE: the CASCADE virus.
3) The Partition Table: The partition table on your HARD DISK tells MS-DOS how big your hard
disk is, and what percentage of it is used by MS-DOS. A virus can corrupt
your partition table, which wipes out ALL of your files in an instant.
EXAMPLE: the MICHELANGELO virus.
4) .COM and .EXE Files: Files with these extensions are EXECUTABLE files, which perform a
specific action. A virus can attach itself to one of these kinds of files and
corrupt the way it operates.
EXAMPLE: the 4096 virus.
3 THINGS A GOOD VIRUS PROTECTION PROGRAM SHOULD DO
1) SCAN for viruses: A good program should be able to check your floppy and hard disks for
viruses, as well as the RAM of your computer, and detect the presence of a
virus in the 4 locations mentioned above.
2) CLEAN up the virus: A good program must be able to get rid of the virus it finds in any of the 4
places mentioned above; otherwise, it's useless.
3) PROTECT YOU from viruses: A good program must have the ability to load a piece of the program into memory
at boot-up time, to protect you from getting a virus in the first place.

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