Viruses? Dis-infecting and Quarantining?

Question

What's the difference between the 2? I just downloaded a file and my anti virus program found a virus, it said that the file couldnt be disinfected so it quarantined it. When I view the file in quarantine, it has the options to delete and restore. If I delete it, is the virus off my computer for good or is it just deleted from quarantine and loose in my cpu?

If it disinfects a file, is the file now usuable? And if it quarantines it, what exactly does that do? Also when I view the log of quarantines for spyware, it has a lot of spywares and my only options are to delete or restore them. If I remove it from list, does that delete them for good? Should I just leave the quarantines alone?

Answer 1

Some viruses attached themselves to good files on your computer. In this case, it is best to try and 'recover' the file by 'dis-infecting ' it. Once it is disinfected, it is then usable as the file it was intended to be.

Other viruses are nothing but malicious code with a file name that sounds almost legitimate. So to rule these out, one first tries to 'dis-infect' the file. If the file cannot be 'dis-infected', chances are it is pure malicious code. So you 'quarantine' the file to keep it from doing anything bad to your computer. The purpose of quarantining a file is to allow it to continue to exist until such time that you are sure it isn't a critical file on your computer then you delelte it.

One would only 'restore' a quaranteend file if they knew for a fact that it is a specific file necessary for the operation of a specific program and that the antivirus program is calling it a virus by mistake. You have to be familiar with your files.

As a general rule, most files that end up in quarantine should be immediatly deleted.

My own rule of thumb is....delete it from quarantine and worry about recovery later if it was a real file.

(When in doubt...Delete from quarantine)!

A quarantined file is rendered helpless to infect your computer while it is in quarantine.

An example I can offer up in the case of restoring a quarantined file is a key logger that I have for monitoring other peoples actions on my computer. It comes up as a virus in the antivirus program. I know what it is and that I put it there and know that it isn't a virus. So I restore it back to use.