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Norton AntiVirus fended off another attack upon my computer, by a virus, the other day. It was not really a virus, but a worm, which Norton calls the Wscript.KakWorm. Apparently, a worm is passed around from computer to computer (by email in this case), but does not actively replicate as a virus does. This one caused me a lot of trouble, about two hours of work, not directly because of the virus, but because Norton AntiVirus quarantined the infected file (my email inbox) so that I had no access to it. I had to turn off Norton Antivirus, split my most recent email into several files, turn on Norton Antivirus, and then see which parts had the worm. This laborious process pinpointed the offending message (from a person presumably unaware that he had sent me the worm), which I then let Norton quarantine. It took two hours because I was in a hurry, and made some mistakes, like rechecking for viruses in files that I already knew contained the worm. Anyway, I got all of my email back, except for the one infected message, which I printed out so I could reply to it. To be extra sure, I then did a complete virus scan of my hard disk. It turns out that, in this case, I would have had much less trouble without Norton AntiVirus, as the worm only affects Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, which I do not use. But, then I might have spread the worm to other people's computers.
If you have an anti-virus program, make sure you continue to get the latest updates (you may have to pay to renew every year or so), because new viruses keep coming out. See Norton Anti Virus.
Also see my articles on the Happy99 Virus and The Love Bug Virus.