Do you know what is the boot sector virus and how to remove it? From this article, you can find the answers. In addition, you can master how to avoid getting the boot sector virus again and other information about the boot sector virus. If you want to know more things about the sector, you can view the MiniTool website.
What Is the Boot Sector Virus?
The boot sector virus is not a particular virus, but a specific way in which a virus affects your PC. As one of the oldest forms of PC virus out there, the boot sector virus infects the hard drive’s boot sector or partition table.
The boot sector is responsible to start the boot process and load your system, which is a physical sector on your hard drive. Therefore, if there is a virus in the boot sector, then the virus will be initiated the moment you start your computer, and even before your OS starts to start up.
How Does the Boot Sector Virus Work?
The aims of the boot sector virus are different, so they work differently. But since they are located on your hard drive’s boot sector and they are activated before the OS starts, there is a great possibility for them to cause huge damage.
Some may just cause irritating problems that the same as adware or malware viruses create, but others can work like Trojans, monitoring what you are doing and stealing your information in the background. Ransomware also often uses a boot sector to save content on the hard drive for ransom.
If you have installed other hard drives or have plugged physical media into your operating system, then the boot sector virus can even propagate to them.
How to Identify If You Have the Boot Sector Virus?
In general, the boot sector virus is not apparent to spot. It usually depends on what kind of virus you’ve been infected with.
Unless the person accessing your computer remotely is awkward, it is almost impossible to detect some of the most dangerous viruses, such as RAT (Remote Access Trojan).
But if your files disappear from the partition or your PC suddenly act unstable and often crash, then there may be viruses on your boot sector. And if you got error messages (such as “invalid system disk”) popped periodically, you might have the boot sector virus.
You can also run a regular anti-virus software scan or use a malware detection tool to identify any potential problems before the problem gets worse.
How to Remove the Boot Sector Virus?
Your PC may get the boot sector viruses through infected physical media such as USB flash drives in tradition. And then the boot sector virus may infect the MBR of the storage device.
But now your PC may get the virus via malware that you download or email attachments. Therefore, you need to remove the boot sector virus when your PC is infected.
Here are the ways of the boot sector virus removal.
Antivirus software: The antivirus software gives you the best ways to remove the malicious files. It provides you with boot sector protection to protect your hard drive’s MBR and some software even have bootable physical media to remove the boot sector virus more easily.
Malware removal applications: You can use malware removal Apps to detect any other malware on your OS before it causes worse problems.
How to Avoid Getting the Boot Sector Virus Again?
After removing the boot sector virus, you need to adopt some methods to avoid getting the boot sector virus again.
Upgrade your antivirus and malware protection: Make sure that your antivirus and malware protection is up to date. Regularly released new virus definitions will keep your PC informed of new virus and malware-based threats. Good anti-virus software can also protect your boot sector and quickly detect if a virus is trying to interfere with it.
Be wary of physical media: Note the location of the USB on your computer. This is one of the key ways that your PC might be affected by a boot sector virus. Consider the source of the USB stick before you use it and do not put it on your computer before starting the system.
Stay vigilant of the network: Boot sector viruses can easily transfer between different computers on the same network. Note which network you are connecting to the system.
Never download suspicious files: Consider where to download the files and always run a virus scan on them before opening them. In particular, Torrented files can open your malware virus and can cause your boot sector to be infected.