Prevention:

It’s been said that prevention is better than cure.   So my first recommendation is to get an anti-virus program, use it and keep it up-to-date.

I’m not going to recommend one specific product here because they are forever getting better and worse and bigger and better and someone, somewhere will always disagree with whatever I recommend.  And I can’t say I’ve used every product or done a thorough comparison.

If you don’t know where to start, some anti-virus software products are (in alphabetical order to avoid bias):

Pick one that works for your budget, read reviews (avoid fake, sponsored reviews)  and get advice from local experts.   Stick with only one as installing more than one will be counter-productive.  It will slow your system down, create more work for you to administer them both and keep them up-to-date, and they will probably conflict in some way with each other.

But I will recommend this.  Get an anti-virus of some sort, keep it up-to-date and use it (I might have mentioned this already…).

Oh, And back up your files!  I know, I know, it’s boring and tedious and there aren’t many decent backup utilities out there but believe me that you’ll be well pleased when a virus infects your documents and you have a recent backup to use once the virus is cleaned out.

And if you feel that that isn’t enough, get a firewall and a spyware/malware program as well. I use a software firewall (cause it’s free) and really enjoy the control it gives you over which applications are allowed what access to the internet and to your pc.

Cure

I recently have had a few cases where prevention wasn’t enough or wasn’t existed and I’ve had to clean out some nasty little viruses.   I had a rescue cd but it was getting a big outdated and I wanted to have more than one to make sure I got everything.

I found a great roundup of anti-virus and rescue disks here:
http://www.techmixer.com/free-bootable-antivirus-rescue-cds-download-list/

These are free to download, burn and then you can use them to recover from a virus infection.    I would suggest using CDRW disks if possible as the definitions and the programs themselves will change over time as viruses change.   And you’ll want to update your rescue disks occasionally.   The nice thing about these rescue disks is that they are usually based on a light Linux distribution and therefore will run even if your Windows installation is crippled or won’t boot.

Malware

Assuming you can at least boot into safe mode, there are some excellent apps around for clearing out and preventing spyware etc.  Some of the apps mentioned above will cover this type of software as well but the following are specialists: