Virus and spyware infections

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Virus and spyware infections

Viruses and other malicious software are a very likely reason for most of computer problems including low performance. This usually happens because an unwanted program runs in the background without you even knowing it and it uses a lot of resources, not leaving enough for other software on your computer. Windows starts to run slower than usual and it only gets worse in games.

Do I have an unwanted piece of software on my computer?

The first thing to do if you have such suspicions is to run Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc in Windows Vista or Ctrl+Alt+Del in Windows XP and older). Before that you should close all other applications for results to be valid. Now your computer is in idle, which means that not much should be going on and that your CPU usage should be at minimum (That is usually 0 - 5%, although it can be higher on modern systems, where CPU speed lowers when on idle). Also check the amount of memory available. If memory usage is high above normal (only you really know, how much memory your computer usually uses), this is also an indication of unwanted programs.

If your CPU usage is constantly high, you can check, which process is "guilty" for this. Choose processes tab in Task Manager and look up which one is using the most percent of your CPU's capacity. If you do not know, which program is that, then try going to Uniblue Process library and typing the name of suspicious process in the search field. You will get detailed results about it and the site will also tell you, if your computer is at risk because of it. Try ending the process to see if it makes any difference (if you CAN end it).

If it turns out, that one or more of your processes are harmful (virus, work or spyware), there are two options:

If your knowledge of computing is good, you could try googling the process - there is a chance that you will find a guide, how to remove it by yourself.

If your knowledge is not so advanced or if Google does not offer you anything useful, there is a lot of useful software that could help you - some even for free. Roughly said, there are two basic groups of software, that will come handy in such situations - anti-spyware and anti-virus software (better antivirus programs also detect and remove spyware).

I will name some free and some "pay for" anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, which are good in my opinion. All have links to their homepage, where you can download them. You can still download trial versions for those which are not free if you want to try them out without buying.

Anti virus

Anti spyware

Free

Pay for

Free

Pay for

Avast Antivirus Home

AVG (free) Antivirus

Avira AntiVir Personal

Kaspersky AntiVirus

BitDefender Antivirus

Bitdefender's free online scan might come in handy when you need to scan a computer, which does not have any antivirus software istalled. Please run it in Internet Explorer, because it will not work properly in other browsers.

Although you might think you do not need one of these on your computer, I recommend you to buy/download some sort of protection for your computer. You could be lucky and use internet for years without a single problem, but no one is lucky enough to never encounter a serious threat for your computer and your data.

At the end of this article I would like to recommend you to clean your registry from time to time. This can be done with registry cleaning software. Be sure you backup your registry before cleaning to avoid any problems (these programs automatically offer you to create backup).

Registry cleaning software

Free

Pay for

CCleaner

Comodo System cleaner

Easycleaner

Eusing free registry cleaner

Argente registry cleaner

Registry Mechanic

Advanced system optimizer

Advanced registry optimizer

AMUST registry cleaner