What do viruses do?

Ok, so when your body gets a virus, like the flu, what does it does to your body, I mean things like coughing, fever and runny nose are caused by your own body to get rid of the virus or to boost defenses, like if you eat something bad, you will throw up, well tha's the human bosy, and if you get in a coma, your body enters an energy saving mode, so it can use all its energy to fix something in your body, and stuff like that, so what do Viruses acually do? will they kill you like HIV does, or will it change your body, I am comfused, please answer.

What do viruses do?norton antivirus 2007

What viruses do is that when your infected, it will go into your body and search for the type of cell it was told to infect. Lets say it is told to infect Hemogloben. It would go find a Hemogloben, and inject it's Dna into it. First of all, viruses contain DNA and legs, as wells as a needle like thing. When the virus injects the dna, the dna will take over the original DNA in the cell (Hemogloben) and will tell the cell to, instead of doing it's original purpose (holding oxygen for blood cells...wait is hemogloben a cell...whatever, lets pretend it is) to rather make more of the virus. What happens is the cell infected will produce more and more of the virus inside the cell until it can not fill anymore and it will burst, releasing the virus into the blood stream to infect more cells. What is the result is thsoe cells infect will disappear from your body, since they are being infected and bursting. So soon, lets say our example of hemogloben, you will run out of the cell (which is bad for hemogloben sicne that means your blood cells have no oxygen, and you can not breath correctly). This is why HIV kills your white blood cells, since the virus is targeted on White blood cells... I forgot which one... the one that marks what is not part of the body. Viruses however is not really alive... well it is kind of... but officially, it is not a living thing.