What happens to a virus?

[yogi]

Hi Guys, could someone please explain : when a file is deleted from a pc as I understand it is only the reference to it that is gone, preventing that file being accessed again,so then that part of the hdd can be overwritten and reused. If the file contained a virus or trojan, does the virus still remain on the harddrive until it is overwritten. How does it become inactive just because your antivirus program deletes it, or in quarrantine, has it not just been shifted to another folder ? Thanks for any input

[nara]

I know that quarantined viruses are encrypted to disable them, but I'm not sure if they're actually moved.

Interesting question.

[Canker_Canison]

As simply as I can put this....

Quarentine stops the file from being accessed outside of the antivirus program.

As you are aware, deleting removes the location header so the file system doesn't know where it is. If you don't know where something is, you can't use it.

All files are capable of being discovered with recovery software until it is over written. So the only danger is if you use such software & access the infected file...but the antivirus software will pick it up & either quarentine or delete it again.

[Cronus]

As simply as I can put this....

Quarentine stops the file from being accessed outside of the antivirus program.

As you are aware, deleting removes the location header so the file system doesn't know where it is. If you don't know where something is, you can't use it.

All files are capable of being discovered with recovery software until it is over written. So the only danger is if you use such software & access the infected file...but the antivirus software will pick it up & either quarentine or delete it again.

Well said.

A virus is put in to a kind of sandbox enviroment where it can't be accessed.