Those who have a Windows machine has to always live with the fear of being infected by some malicious code. Ever got a feel that your computer my be infected with some malicious stuff and ur not aware of what it is or how to find it. Then this hub isfor you. This page gives a generalized approach on how to find a malicious attack and how to handle it.

When you notice something happening in your computer without your knowledge, its most likely that your computer is infected. To confirm it close all the open applications, restart the computer and open the Task Manager. Notice the CPU usuage and Network Usuage in it. If its in a high state continuously, then its more likely that your system is affected.

If you find the CPU usuage to be abnormal then see the list of processes that are running in your system. Order them by the % CPU coloumn. Make sure to check the "Show Processes from all Users" option. Mostly the malicious process will be running under the username system.

If the process thats using too much CPU is the System Idle Process then there is nothing much to worry for now. Because it just hangs up with the CPU like that for some time and then it releases from it. But if there is any other process which is taking up the CPU note down the name of the process. Right click the process and click the "Open File Location" option. This will open the folder which contains the file in explorer and points the file.

Also please be aware that this option will not be available in WIndows XP. Those who are using XP can use the Process Explorer NT, a free utility supplied my Microsoft corporation. I would recomment this one even for people using Vista. This is lot like a normal Task Manager, but incorporates more functionalities in it.

Now with the file you found, submit it to some antivirus site. There are a lot of websites which offer you with free scanning of files. I would recommend you to use the Virus Scanner offered by Kaspersky. The link for it is below.

With the result from the page you can be sure whether your system is infected or not.

In case you find a lot of network activity, then install the Net Limiter Monitor from the below page.

This is a freeware and it will let you know how the programs which are using the Internet. Once you identify the program, you can repeat the above steps to find the file and submit it for verification.

An useful suggestion to avoid an malicious attack is not to use your computer with an account which has administrator privilages. By default the first account you create in your system doesn't have a password. Create a password for it and create a normal user account for general usage. The main reason for this is that there are possibilities of you accidentally loading the scripts which install those codes from internet. When you open those scripts from admin accounts it never asks you for a warning message and install it right away. But when you do it from a normal user account, the system would deny access saying that you dont have enough priviledges to do it. That really prevents a hell lot of viruses from taking next step.Also update your virus definitions regularly.

I will talk about spywares and other similar kind of threats in my next Hub pages. Just look out for them.