Virus on the company network

A virus was introduced onto the ITSMAGIC network, this virus affected many computers. the problem is with the virus that was introduced was that effects .EXE files and .COM files, obviously if you are not familiar with these file types this is what they are:

.EXE: program files, this is the extension for you programs on your PC.
.COM: DOS command files, this is an extension that is used by DOS in windows and helps commands that are written in DOS.

The virus was called the "Gotcha" virus, this is brought onto networks via USB devices or portable devices. the way to stop this virus is to scan your devices before you take it to another computer, also scan your computer so that you dont put it back on the device. This virus has a few other effects beside just infecting files and stopping them from working it can also take upto 1024MB of RAM (thats 1GB!!!), if you dont have a Gigabyte of RAM installed on your computer you wont get past your boot up stage because the virus uses all the RAM when you boot.

one of the ways that you will find out if you have the virus is that if you go to print you may have the screen freeze and a message pop up reading "Gotcha", this is what the virus does and you will have to remove it quickly if you come across this as it spreads to program files and DOS.