The most common blunder people make when the topic of a computer virus arises is to refer to a worm or Trojan horse as a virus. While the words Trojan, worm and virus are often used interchangeably, they are not the same. Viruses, worms and Trojan Horses are all malicious programs that can cause damage to your computer, but there are differences among the three, and knowing those differences can help you to better protect your computer from their often damaging effects.

A computer virus attaches itself to a program or file so it can spread from one computer to another, leaving infections as it travels. Much like human viruses, computer viruses can range in severity: Some viruses cause only mildly annoying effects while others can damage your hardware, software or files. Almost all viruses are attached to an executable file, which means the virus may exist on your computer but it cannot infect your computer unless you run or open the malicious program. It is important to note...

Another tool to add in your USB memory key to use in case of emergency. The KillProcess tool is a perfect killer for your applications.

A short description from the author :
It can terminate almost any process on a Windows machine, including any service and process running in the system. Even protected Microsoft system processes can be terminated.

This tool can be helpful to terminate certain unknown processes that can be impossible shut down in other normal ways.

Also it has a great feature , the ability to create “kill lists” where you create a list of processes you want to kill.
As other tools already posted here the KillProcess is released with freeware licence and is available in a portable version.

For further details refers to the...

On H Security Conficker information site  ( thanks to Pbuogu for his post "Easy test for Conficker") , there is a list of useful links to Info pages , removal tools , network scanners and Test pages from different antivirus vendors.

In case you need an easy and quick tool to detect the Conficker virus in your computer check there sites :

• Conficker Working Group [Updated]

• Conficker test from the University of Bonn

Interesting to see how this virus is documented from different vendors with reports and tool...

Different security groups and analysts prepared tests for your system to detect Conficker/Downadup/Kido infections.
Heise.de prepared quick one also.

Heise.de Conficker test