Chances that you run into a computer virus that will complete ruin your system have slightly decreased over the last few years.

The reason for this is not only that today's virus scanners do their job pretty well, but also because modern viruses try to accomplish other tasks than their ancestors.

Today, more and more viruses come to life with a pretty clear goal in mind : they are after your money.

When it comes to finding clever, amazing ways to steal your money and transfer it to their makers, modern viruses prove to be very creative.

Let's look at the MayArchive.B virus as an example. Once your computer is infected with this virus, the virus silently copies the contents of files with certain extensions to its own archive named EncryptedFiles.als. After that, it deletes the original files and surprises you with a message that your files are encrypted and that you need to send an email to a certain e-mail address in order to get your files back.

If you send this e-mail, you will probably receive an answer telling you that you need to buy something in a certain online shop to get your files back.

Viruses that work like that and ask for a ransom in exchange for your files are known as ransomware.

When your pc gets infected with the MayArchive.B ransomware, you may also find a file called Instructions how to get your files back.txt in your "My Documents" folder. The instructions explain that your files are encrypted and locked behind a 30+ symbol password.

When dealing with the particular example of MayArchive.B it may be relatively easy to get your files back.

If you can manage to find the file EncryptedFiles.als on your hard disk, there's a good chance that you can get it done quickly. If you have found the file, double-click it. A new dialog pops up that says "Read INSTRUCTIONS to get your files back". Click ok in that window.

Now, a new window with an "extract" button appears. Click the extract button. That will fire up a password prompt window. Enter AssociateFileExtension as the password and press enter. Now wait until your files are extracted and then close the window.

The ransomware should restore your files to your "My Documents" folder.

Please make sure that your files are restored properly, because due to bugs in the trojan's code some of your files may become corrupted.

With today's existing virus threats and even more aggressive forms of ransomware being reported, it cannot be repeated enough that everyone needs a decent anti virus program on their computer.

Everyone.

Some very good anti virus software is even freely available for personal, non-commercial use. An overview is at http://www.windows-help-central.com/avg-for-windows-xp.html