We are going to have to assume from now on that there will always be large numbers of people around the world who are not running virus programs for one reason or another. To deal with that some significant changes are going to have to be made or I think that the Internet is going to develop some really serious problems. Internet service providers will probably need to intercept some of the viruses.

I believe that you can visit the Symantec - Norton Web site and run a program which will check your computer for viruses for free. But you have to say connected with the Internet. And it might take several hours to run depending on your connection speed.

Also, I believe that the only time that you actually need to keep most virus programs running is when you are downloading e-mail etc. At many other times you can deactivate them if they are slowing your system.