What to do if computer is infected?

How to clean infected mailbox?

Anti-Virus product handles the e-mail client mailbox as it handles any file in your hard drive. So, if you have infection in your mailbox, please do not select "Delete" option with disinfection wizard since it will delete your mailbox file and not only the virus. If the disinfection wizard cannot remove a virus from your mailbox, you can also delete it manually. To remove the infected mail from the mailbox, please disable 'Virus Protection' temporarily.

Step 1: Disable antivirus protection

• Double click the blue 'F-Secure' icon next to system tray
• Go to 'Virus protection'- section of F-Secure settings and select 'Change...'
• Select 'Off' from 'Profile Selection'
• Open your e-mail client and remove the infected mail manually. Be very careful not to execute any attachments because Anti-Virus realtime protection is currently disabled!

Step 2: Remove infected mail manually

To remove the virus from mailbox, you have to delete the infected message(s) in e-mail client used. After this, compact the mailbox and scan the mailbox file manually just to be sure the file is clean. Current versions of F-Secure Anti-Virus, F-Secure Internet Security or F-Secure Anti-Virus Client Security can't delete the virus infection inside the mailbox file. By using Email scanning functionality in F-Secure Anti-Virus 2004, F-Secure Internet Security 2004 or F-Secure Anti-Virus Client Security the viruses won't come to the mailbox file in the first place.

Step 3: Compact your mailbox

Compacting (or compressing) the mailbox depends on the e-mail client used. Please see the mail client documentation for details. Below is instructions on how to compact mailbox for most commonly used mail client.

Netscape Messenger and Mozilla mail client :
Right-click the folder, select "Compress folder" or "Compact this folder"

In Outlook Express, select File/Folders/Compact all folders

In Outlook, the mailbox compacting varies greatly depending on the version used. Take a look at the following Microsoft articles:

Outlook 97
Outlook 98 CW [Corporate Workgroup]
Outlook 98 IMO [Internet Mail Only]
Outlook 2000 IMO [Internet Mail Only]
Outlook 2000 CW [Corporate Workgroup]
Outlook 2002 & Office Outlook 2003
Outlook 2002

Step 4: What to do if I don't know which mail is infected?

What if FSAV doesn't show exactly which message is infected, it just shows infection in the mailbox file? In this case one way to remove the infection manually is to create a couple of temporary mail folders. Then, move half of the infected mailbox to new mailbox, compact folders and rescan them. After this, the infection should be in either one of the mailboxes. Move again half of the mails from this infected box to a new one, compact folders & rescan. Repeat as long is needed. This way it's quite fast to find out where the infection is, even if the original mailbox file had thousands of messages. This also applies for mailbox files that have unknown format where FSAV only detects infection in the file but doesn't pinpoint the message.

Step 5: Enable antivirus protection