HOW DO VIRUSES AFFECT YOUR PC ?

HOW DO VIRUSES AFFECT YOUR PC

Viruses will affect your PC in 4 different ways . . .

•    The Boot Sector
•    The File Allocation Table
•    The Partition Table
•    .COM and .EXE Files


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.


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.


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.


.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.