Computer viruses and other kinds of malware can get into your computer while you are accessing the internet or when you connect an external device (Flash Disk) to your computer that has malware or virus on it.
Computer viruses are detrimental to your computers health and may the computer to crash resulting into loss of data, if not detected early by the antivirus and deleted or when you don’t have an antivirus or haven’t updated the antivirus on your computer.
Here are some indicators of a virus on your computer in case your antivirus hasn’t alerted you.
Blue screen of death (BSOD).
If your computer freezes regularly crashes or crashes and displays a blue screen, this is due to incompatibility between your software/drivers and hardware. But if you have the latest/updated drivers, then your computer is infected with a virus that is conflicting with other programs and causing your computer to crash.
Slow computer
It’s so frustrating when your computer starts working slowly or is not running as it used to, this maybe when you’re browsing the Internet or simply accessing your local applications. However this means you have viruses on your computer and the main purpose of this malware is to drain your computer’s processing resources and slow it down
Lack of storage space
Some types of malware tend to fill up your hard drive with suspicious files by manipulating and corrupting the files saved on your computer. In case you find any programs that you have never installed before or notice that file sizes are changing/fluctuating even for the files that you aren’t accessing, that’s a true indication of a computer virus.
An example of malware that can fill up your hard drive with suspicious files, is Ransomware.
False alarms
In some instances, you may get alarming pop-up messages while surfing the web, warning that a virus has been found on your computer claiming a virus has been found on your computer, download software to get rid of it. This warning itself is a malware that will trick you into downloading a software virus that will harm your computer and or spy on you.
If the message has not come from your own anti-virus or anti-spyware applications, be careful to trust it, as neither Microsoft nor Apple will ever call/ alert/notify you that your PC has a virus
Failing to access files or drives on your computer
Getting notification messages on your computer indicating that that you can’t access some files or drives on your computer is another sign that your computer is infected. If you also find that other hardware like printers are no longer responding to commands. May also indicate that you have a virus on your computer,
Computer fan running constantly.
Your computer’s fans run constantly at breakneck speed and you can actually hear it running faster than they should
Low disk space on your C Partition notification.
If you haven’t been adding more programs or other files on your computer and are getting a pop-up notification showing that you running low on space on the windows C hard drive partition on your computer. This happens when the free disk space on your computer has dropped below the low disk space notification threshold associated with the Disk Cleanup utility.
This is also an indication of a virus on your computer as many different types of malware programs use different methods to fill up all the available space in the hard drive and cause it to crash.
How to remove Malware from your computer
Solution 1: Restart computer in Safe Mode.
Disconnect your computer from the internet and turn computer off and on again, then strike the F8 key at first instance of monitor display to access Advanced Boot menu and select Safe Mode from the menu. This will help prevent the malware from spreading and your antivirus program will likely be more effective when run in Safe Mode.
Solution 2: Delete Temporary files
After you have restarted your computer in Safe Mode, delete temporary files using the Disk Cleanup tool. You can do this by Click on windows Start menu>all programs> accessories>system tools>>disk clean up, highlight and delete all temporary files.
This will speed up the virus scanning, free up disk space, and get rid of malware. Then scan computer with your installed anti-virus software
Solution 3: Download and run malware scanners.
Since your current antivirus software may not have detected the malware before, download Malwarebytes on your computer and if it’s not able to access internet, download it on another computer and transfer to the infected computer using a USB flash drive.
After downloading Malwarebytes, run the setup file and follow the wizard to install the program. Once the program and thereafter run scan your computer to remove/delete malware.
Reinstall Windows.
If all else fails and you can’t remove the virus with an antivirus program, you will need to reinstall your copy of your windows OS where you will have to format the drives and create new partition. However before you do this, make sure that you have backed up your files
Related articles:
