What to do if your computer is infected
- Immediately disconnect your computer from the Internet because viruses, spyware, or malware sends spam, attack other computer on the Internet, spread itself, and invade your privacy. Also it prevent further download of other infections.
- Run a virus scan (If you don't have one, click here) A list of Antivirus and among other tools are listed.
- If your virus software is not up-to-date, you may have to risk it and go online to update your virus signature. Once it has been updated, quickly disconnect from the Internet.
- This is why it is a good idea to have an up to date antivirus programs at all time.
- If the virus has disabled your Antivirus software, you will have to go into Safe Mode.
- If you can't get rid of the virus, try going into safe mode by pressing F8 at startup (This might be different depending on the computer), and run the antivirus scanner from there.
- When running in Safe Mode, the computer load only the necessary file for the computer to operate. Which mean that, the virus is not loaded unless the system files are infected.
- When in Safe Mode, you are not able to connect to the Internet. If you need to, after pressing F8, instead of choosing Safe Mode, choose Safe Mode with Networking.
- Once you are in Safe Mode with Networking Option, you can reconnect your Ethernet cable to your computer. Now you have Internet connection to update the antivirus software or any security tools, download or installed any security tools, or do research on the Infection name.
- Run the virus, malware, and spyware software in safe mode.
- Run multiple antivirus, malware, spyware software because sometime a single security tools does not get rid all the infections.
- Some infection are profile specific, so by deleting your profile you get rid of the virus. But to be safe, make sure that you run a virus, spyware, and malware scan afterward.
- If your security tools found an infection, quarantine it (Remove from your system and put it in a place similar to a jail cell). Then remove the infection.
- To be safe, a removal of an infection may require the system to be reboot. Make sure to reboot the computer back into safe mode and then do another scan because sometime the virus maybe hard to remove the first time. Another option is to use another security tool to remove the infection.
- If the infections are still there, do a system restore. Click here for instruction.
- If system restore does not work, the last option will be to do a fresh install meaning wiping out everything and reinstalling the Operating System.
***Make sure that you backup all important files and data because all data will be erase in this process***