When you notice that your PC has started to slow down, crashes quite often, pop-ups appear randomly in your browser, or you can see random unusual messages or programs start automatically, you need to know that your computer might be infected with malware. Malware is a software intentionally designed to cause harm, spying, data theft, hacking, application interruption to a computer, network, server, etc.
In such a condition, what is the first step you would take? You can try these simple steps to clean up your infected computer.
- Physically Disconnect Your System from the Internet
If you think that your system is attacked by malware, you should immediately unplug the system from any connected network, be it your Wi-Fi router or your broadband connection.
- Boot your PC into Safe Mode
You need to convert your PC into Safe mode as it makes it harder for malware to load itself and execute as soon as windows starts. To Enter safe mode, restart your machine and press the f8 key, keep pressing until window loads with safe mode.
- Police Your Online Behavior
One should be aware of the content that you are surfing on the internet. You need to clear the cookies from your browser, and it is better not to open any website that looks suspicious or might be blocked by your antivirus software.
- Clear temporary files from your system
You need to clear all the existing content from the temporary files helping it to remove any residual files that are malicious. You can either do it by using your computer’s inbuilt disk cleanup utility or manually clean it by pressing a window+r key.
- Scan Your Device Using a Reputed Antivirus
Last but not least, scan your system with reputed antivirus. The scanning might take a few hours, but there is no other option. Most of the users often do not understand the importance of using reputed antivirus software. Norton antivirus is one such antivirus protects your system from all kind of virus and malware.
If you want to know more about the antivirus and solve your doubts, you can contact Norton antivirus customer service and AVG Antivirus Customer Service answer all your queries.