Could someone tell me at what point does the infection occur? Do you get infected while downloading a file? After the file finishes downloading? Or when you open the file? Will doing a scan help you not get infected? Thanks!! The 3rd option is kinda stupid:$

Hello Blue Dog
for infection everything has been used !
obviously loading an image or a document cannot infect your system. From E-mail its when you read an attachment, that start opening with word or excel or some other program which become carrier of the virus files and its infection. What worse is that you go and read on one site and another send you the infection. That's why you should should choose to retrieve only from the site you are visiting and nothing from others. It is an option in mozilla firefox definitely and most probably in IE also.
Unfortunately windows has made it so easy to keep these viruses starting from the registry, that it is now a big problem !
Some anti virus will find the virus/trojans/other some others won't ! because the strategy of scanning is to scan from a list of known viruses. New ones are never in those lists, and apparently there are 100,000 to chose from. So when you're infected you can choose to HiJackThis display to sort of read what's working/running in you're PC and send it to a or the forum
and hope somebody can decipher which is/are the virus(es) in the list - and they never come alone ! Then the corrective action
must be taken. If you use internet security - the problem reduces to twice a year for viruses. Otherwise getting infected is measured to in 20 minutes of surfing. One thing to remember, is when you are asked something you not prompted for - like download this - because you have a problem - reply no, because that part of marketing by fear. Viruses on disk are really no problem, its when they are running in memory that they become
vindictive. The best solution I found is not to surf with Windows,
and you'll be surprised how good windows work without the net. I
surf from Linux even without installing it, and I haven't had the use of anti-virus for a year now. And Linux is free (take a good one like PCLinuxOS LiveCD), and the rest of your computing you stay with windows. If you have a virus do a HiJackThis log and save it. Do a system restore and another HiJackThis log.
The difference is usually your Viruses - -
if you need more just ask again ?

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