August 23 2012
A malware infection can exhibit an array of symptoms - or none at all. Indeed, the most insidious threats (password stealers and data theft trojans) seldom show any tell-tale signs of infection. In other cases, such as scareware, you may experience system slowdown or an inability to access certain utilities such as Task Manager.Depending on your experience level, there are various options you can try. Following is a list of those options beginning with the easiest and working through to the more advanced.Option 1: Try Your Antivirus Software First.If your Windows computer is infected with a virus, your first step should be to update your and run a full system scan. Make sure you close all programs before running the scan. This scan may take several hours, so perform this task when you don't need to use the computer for awhile. (If your computer is already infected, you really shouldn't be using it anyway.)If malware is found, the antivirus scanner will generally take one of three actions: . If after running the scan, the malware is removed but you are receiving system errors or a blue screen of death, you may need to .Option 2: Boot into Safe Mode.Safe Mode prevents applications from loading and lets you interact with the operating system in a more controlled environment. Though not all antivirus software will support it, try and running an antivirus scan from there. If Safe Mode will not boot or your antivirus won't run in Safe Mode, try booting normally but press and hold the shift key when Windows starts to load. Doing so should prevent any applications (including some malware) from loading when Windows is started.If applications (or the malware) still loads, then the ShiftOveride setting may have been changed by the malware.