Using the Internet, like all great things, comes with a risk. There are a couple of things out there that can cause harm to your computer and the files that you have saved on your hardware. Many of these things you can receive from visiting sketchy websites or downloading music or movies and even by clicking links in emails from people you do not know. In each case these viruses have come to be known as malware. Malware can do a variety of things like spy on you, corrupt your data, destroy your hard drive, or give control of your computer to someone else thousands of miles away.
Don’t Panic
If you think you have a virus, you do not need to assume the worst. Don’t assume that you might have to wipe your entire computer and lose all of the data that you had on that computer because that is not always the case. Often times you can remove malware without losing data, you might lose some but definitely not all.
Assess The Situation
The first thing you need to do is determine if you actually have a virus, just like a doctor runs a few tests before making a diagnosis, you should do the same. If while you’re reading this, your computer just happens to get better with time, you might want to think about some preventive medicine. Some Internet providers like frontier internet service Rochester NY, include a malware prevention package in some of their packages with technical support.
The Signs
If your computer is running a little slow in just about everything that it does when you have minimal programs running, then you might have some malware although a simple restart could solve your problem. If you open your web browser and it looks different or brings you to a new home page that you have never seen before then this is a pretty solid sign that your computer has been infected with malware. You can also be pretty sure of malware if your computer is constantly crashing. Another thing that pretty much guarantees your computer is infected with malware is if you try to open multiple files and a message saying they are corrupted appears on the screen.
Plan Of Attack
So your computer has a virus, what are you going to do about it? It is time for you to run antivirus software on your computer in order to find the bugs and weed them out. There are some online programs that will be able to run a scan on your computer and tell you what kind of viruses you have, but be careful because some of these websites are actually viruses. Use your best judgement. Some viruses are able to disarm these programs so make sure you find a well-established program to use. Some malware are able to block you from downloading antivirus software so you might have to transfer the software from another computer via a jump drive or something similar.