14 DAY TRIAL // The antivirus technologies installed on our computers are supposed to protect the data from viruses, spyware, malware and any other type of infection. Supposing you have your computer infected with a virus, all you need to do is start your antivirus and perform a full system scan to clean all your files. But what if your antivirus is also infected and it cannot be started to remove the viruses? Well, that's a pretty serious problem. Sort of... Excepting a full format of your HDD, there are several other ways to get rid of the infection and keep the data on your computer without removing it.
So, what can you do? First of all, you can try one of the numerous online scanners which are pretty powerful when it comes to virus removal. Kaspersky's online scanner is one of the web-based antiviruses which can easily disinfect your computer straight from the browser. "The Kaspersky Online Virus Scanner uses Microsoft ActiveX technologies to scan your computer for malicious code and offers the same exceptional detection rates as other Kaspersky Lab products," it is mentioned on the official page of the product.
In case your antivirus is infected with a sort of virus, you're probably affected by one of those threats targeting executable files. That's why you can try uninstalling the antivirus (in case it is entirely broken) and reinstall it after the computer is 100 percent clean.
Anyway, you might hear a lot of people saying 'What the heck man, format the hard drive and you're ready to go!'. Well, I'm one of those who believe your software side of the computer can be fixed whatever it happens so the HDD format is not a solution.
Certainly, all the above suppositions can be easily avoided by installing a powerful downloadable antivirus bundled with a strong firewall. In addition, you can avoid installing malicious programs coming from untrusted sources as well as reading spam messages delivered into your inbox.