How do you know if you have a virus on your computer?

Question

My computer keeps freezing up when I am on the internet.

Answer 1

Symptoms of an Infection-

Unexpected read or write operation.
Not being able to save files.
Experiencing long loading times.
Experiencing Slow system operation.
Seeing Unusual screen activities.
Bad sectors appearing.
Seeing Unusual error messages.
Program fails to execute.
Computer does not boot.
Seeing larger program file sizes.
Seeing strange file names.
Virus can also-

Delete or rename files or directories.
Change the content of files.
Change screen colors.
Format the hard drive.

Answer 2

If your computer is more than 5 years old I would reccommend spending 500 bucks on a new computer. I just got a new computer and I thought I was in heaven because my 98 kept freezing. However, if you cannot afford a new computer I would recommend buying Norton Anti Virus software for 60 bucks. If you want something free, try the Microsoft AntiSpyware download or Spybot: Search and Destroy. Google these to download them, the are free everywhere.

Answer 3

If you have a virus in your computer. You are stock with it. ..... Some times you dont even notice that you have a virus in your computer. So what you need to do is run anti-virus product. The anti-virus product will tell you if it detected some thing. If you dont want to buy a anti-virus product you can get a free scan and it will tell you also the name of the virus.

You can get free scan and the removal tool for the viruas at
http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/?siteID=1&resolution=1024x768.
This website will help you to install the free scan tool and will allow you to remove the virus. I used the tool before and it really works. the only disadvantage with this tool is that it wont protect your computer against any new infections. This tool only remove the virus and cleans your computer, but do not protects against any new infections.

Answer 4

There are many different ways to find out if you have a virus on your PC. The easiest is to run a free web based anti virus scan available at http://housecall.trendmicro.com. It can eliminate some but not all with this scanner. For real protection I recommend you purchase Trend Micro's Pc-cillin or internet security suite. Both are excellent programs

Answer 5

Since the questions you have asked is similar to a lot that appear on answers, I have prepared this to aid you. Topics covered are: Anti virus, Anti spyware, Browsers, e-mail, Word processors, Database, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Drawings and Photo manipulations. All programmes described are free to use, some even for commercial use.

Antiviral.
AVG free. Excellent protection available from: http://www.Grisoft.com

Don't use two antiviral products together as they may be incompatible. If your Antiviral trial has run out, then remove product from your computer and get the AVG installed.

Antispyware
Essential products are: Adaware SE from: http://www.lavasoft.com
Spybot SD from: Download.com or similar, Tucows etc
Spywareblaster “ “ “ “
Windows Defender - from Microsoft downloads.

Office Applications
Open Office has an extremely good free to use and distribute product at http://www.openoffice.org

It contains programmes fully functional in Word-processing, Database, Spreadsheets, Drawing and Presentation. It looks and feels like Microsoft Office and can even make PDF's

Photo-manipulations
For ease of use and management of your photo files try Kodak easyshare software or Picasso.

For advanced and fully functional photographic manipulation gimp2 is very similar to Photoshop and is available from http://gimp.org

Browsers and E-mail programmes.
Can recommend Firefox for browsing and has many safety features installed and is self updating and for a general e-mail programme, Thunderbird is very good. Go to:

http://www.mozilla.com/products/

Fun and helpful programmes
Have a look at Calendar Magic, it has lots of Scientific, Geometry, Factor and Expression calculators as well as Global distances, Sun and Moon Data, a Pregnancy Calculator, Time Data and Alarm clocks as well as an extremely comprehensive range of Calendars in about 27 different formats from Afghanistan to Vietnamese, including Chinese and Hindu.

C Cleaner.http://www.ccleaner.com/
This will tell you a lot about what is on your computer, such as running programmes,cookies, History, settings etc. and will help you clean up and remove unwanted items. Be careful how you use it as it is a very powerful programme and you should read the help index before you do anything with it.

Hope this information is of help to you and others.

Answer 6

The only way to really know is to run a search using whatever programs you might have intsalled on your system, Norton Antivirus, etc., but if you computer seems to be running really slow or acting up a lot and there is not other possible causes, (such as that you have a program update working that is slowing the works down, or you have too many things downloaded that is taking up your memory and slowing your system down) then i would get it checked out.

Answer 7

what kind of internet connection do you have?

try a registry cleaner and a virus suite to clean your computer. Also try some type of spyware detection software to see if you have some type of service running in the background.

Answer 8

Go to the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Site and have it scan and clean your computer, then install anti-virus software.

Answer 9

if it's going slower than normal. then you got a virus, or spy thingy

Answer 10

if it's tongue is hanging out of the floppy drive door it's got a virus