Computer viruses can cause a lot of damage to your computer. Having an anti-virus program is not enough to keep your computer free of viruses. After seeing too many people experiencing this problem on a regular basis, I decided to help you and others get rid of viruses for good. There is no need to shell out big bucks for one of the other commercial anti-virus programs!

Follow these 4 simple rules and your computer will be virus free:

1. Make sure you have a good antivirus program

I’m going to make this simple for you. If you are using your computer for personal (non-business) use then you need to be running Microsoft Security Essentials or AVG Free Anti-Virus (do a quick search on Google for both and download either one for free), and start running it immediately.

Alternatively, if your computer is a business/work computer then go ahead and download NOD32 – it is more than worth the purchase price.

Make sure you are running one of these programs.

2. Keep that anti-virus program up to date

This is the biggest mistake that people make when it comes to keeping their computers virus free. Having the program is not enough. You need to make sure that it is up to date. People are out there as we speak creating new viruses. You need to have your anti virus software up to date so it can fight all of these new viruses.

3. Run regular scans

Set your anti-virus program to run a daily scan at a time your computer is actually turned on. It’s no good scheduling it for 3 AM daily if your computer is not usually on at that time. Make sure those scans run daily. On the weekend, run a full system manual scan yourself.

4. Do not open e-mail attachments unless you are 100% certain they are legitimate

This is a huge part of the problem. Joe gets an e-mail from his brother Gary and it has an attachment. The e-mail tells him to “check out this cool file – it’s hilarious”. Joe convinces himself that it cannot have any viruses because his own brother would never do that to him. WRONG! In many cases, the other person has no idea they are sending you that e-mail. It is automatically generated by a virus or worm on their system. Do not open any e-mail attachment unless they have been clearly mentioned in the e-mail in a way that assures you that the person intentionally sent it. Even then, you should still save it to your desktop and scan it for viruses.

That’s it. Stick to these 4 rules and you will have a computer that runs fast and is virus free.

For further articles to help you solve your computer problems and learn more, go to http://www.fornongeeks.com