well i have a friend on msn, we both use live messanger, just this morning he send me a picture, just a simple jpeg picture, but i'm worried siince i rememebr his pc has alot of virus, although he only send me a jpeg, i'm still worried that the virus on his pc might have gotten into my system.



when i click on the image he sent me, my pc appears to hang for a while, then the picture opens, then i notice my pc seem to be lagging abit than usual.


i do however have norton av and fw with latest definition, and after i receive the file norton didn't give me any warning about virus, still though, i'm worried about the brief period when my pc hangs after i click on the pic, i'm so very worried.



-so do you think any virus or bugs or any kind of stuff has gotten into my pc when he send me the picture and i open it?


-also can a picture be ridden with virus?



he only send me 1 jpeg pcture, that was it, he didn't send me anything else, just a picture, i saved it to my desktop, i NEVER opened the picture though, since i don't want to risk getting infected, i click on it once but didn't open it.




thanks for helping a newbie T_T

It is possible to have a virus in a picture. If it's a picture your friend took i wouldn't worry about it. If it's picture that was downloaded then i wouldn't open it. if your internal alarm is going off trust it. Can seeing one picture be worth losing data perhaps?

If you "NEVER" opened the picture it's strange that it causes a lagging effect on you machine performance, as any virus/worm in a picture only executes its code if you OPEN the file.

You have to look at your file association in windows, because the picture to open needs to start the associated application before, meaning that if you have a "heavy" associated application like Photoshop you will only see the picture after you open Photoshop and it will show you the image, and this will take some time.

But this only happens after you click to opened the file (one or 2 clicks, depending on your setup).

Otherwise, any virus/worm you may have came due to the normal connection, and as you say you have a protected machine.