How to Check if You Have the Conficker Virus

It is pretty easy to check to see if you are infected with the Conficker virus.  The first test consists of opening a web page that will cause your browser to attempt to download a series of images from some well known antivirus sites.  Since the Conficker virus tries to prevent users from browsing to these sites and getting an antivirus program if you cannot view the images on this page then there is a good chance you have the Conficker virus or some other virus.  The page was put together by Joe Stewart from SecureWorks and can be found here: test for the Conficker Virus.

Some other things to check for are:

• If the Windows Defender Service has been stopped.
• If the Windows Update Service has been stopped.

To check this go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools (you might have to change to "Classic View" to see this option) -> Services

The images below show what this looks like in Vista.  You are looking to see that the service is there and says "Started" as it's status:

Windows Defender:

Windows Update Service: