A virus is a piece of code hidden within a seemingly innocent program or document. They do not necessarily have to be large in size so many viruses often go un-noticed. Most of the time the virus will perform an action on your PC, sometimes these actions can be funny. However, sometimes the designer of the virus has other intentions, for example - erasing your entire hard disc. There are a few basic types of virus.

Because of these malicious programmers, viruses are still a growing problem in the computing world. Affecting everyone from pensioners to worldwide businesses (Microsoft, IBM..) at some point along the line.

Essentially a computer virus has many similarities with a virus (in the medical terms).

As a biological virus is spread from person to person, a computer virus is spread from computer to computer. Once into the computer system it tags onto a program, ready to start spreading once the chosen program is executed. The basic rules for a computer virus have always been similar. Infect....Spread.....Destroy (in some cases)

The existence of viruses was born with the emergence of the home pc market. Although pc's were around in the early 80's, viruses only really started to boom when IBM (and Apple) released their home computer.

Because the internet was not in existence for everyday users, viruses needed a way to spread. This ideal form of transport was the floppy disc. During the 80's the floppy disc was the only way of sharing information from PC to PC. Businessmen would carry many of these data storage devices wherever they go, and on the avearage day they would use at least two different computers. If a virus is on one of these discs, it could spread between computers very quickly indeed.

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