What exactly IS a virus?

Can someone please tell me what a virus is in your own words so I can understand it?

Anytime I try to read about it I doesn鈥檛 give me a good answer or what I should do about it. My computer has also been very slow lately.

I鈥檝e been really confused with all these virus protection programs and how to use them. I have AVG Free Edition %26 Webroot Spysweeper, and I try to scan for these 鈥渢hreats鈥? Not much of it makes sense.

My mom overreacts and when anything messes up on the computer, she throws a fit and says that we have a virus. I was guessing that we did, and it said that we did, but they were in the 鈥淎VG virus vault鈥? there were some items detected, I think I deleted one of them, but can't be sure. Does this mean that I have to delete every infected item? Some of them can鈥檛 be healed it says. What does that mean?

I know the basics of computers. But I don鈥檛 know everything, especially not about viruses.

What exactly IS a virus?free spyware remover

A virus is broadly defined as any unwanted file on a computer that might interfere with its performance. Some can be harmful and others annoying.

In your case, with the virus vault, your anti-virus program has found some viruses and has set them aside in a 'vault', so that they cannot harm your computer. This is also sometimes called a 'quarantine'. It isolates the file. If AVG has the option, you can try to 'clean' each virus file, and if that doesn't work, you can delete each file.