Here is a good example of why it is important to have up-to-date antivirus software.

Below is a screen shot taken from a virus scan. The infected computer would not boot to Windows. Instead it just displayed the infamous Microsoft BSOD (blue screen of death) and reported an unmountable boot volume.

The Dell hard drive diagnostic wasn’t much help either, it said that the hard drive (HDD) is bad. The hard drive is not bad at all, it is just infected worse than I have ever seen.

So how did this computer get this bad?

• There is not a legitimate antivirus program installed with up-to-date definitions. This is the most import step to preventing malware infestations and maintaining a healthy PC.
• The owner/operator of this PC uses limewire. Many people use programs like limewire and bearshare to download music, movies and software free. I won’t get into the legal issues with that, but I will tell you that the free software you get usually includes all types of malware.
• No one heeded the warning signs.You should always take action at the first sign that there is something wrong.

Note the amount of threats and the time taken to scan the HDD.