Knowing how to recognize the signs of a malware or virus infection on your computer is very important to avoid the possible negative consequences that this can bring and to intervene promptly with the removal. Sometimes the computer behaves abnormally, sometimes some program does not work as expected, other times, however, there is no special indication of the presence of a virus.
The problem is that today malware is, even more than in previous years, lurking everywhere and ready to hit any PC connected to the internet that does not have the adequate protections represented by antivirus, system and program updates and security settings. active.
To understand if there is a virus in the computer, let's see here what are the signs of infection, the most obvious ones and the most subtle and less evident ones.
READ ALSO: How to recognize and remove all types of viruses and malware: definitive guide
1) Reporting by antivirus
The most obvious signal of the presence of a virus that has infected the computer is the warning from the antivirus that, fortunately, works as it should. The problem in these cases is to understand if this warning really comes from our antivirus or from real malware, which wants us to install something. For this problem, I refer to the next point.
In the case of a true antivirus warning, however, there may be the case that the same warning appears a second and third time even after proceeding with the cleaning, because it means that the antivirus cannot remove it and that the malware resists well action.
In such cases you need to proceed by steps following the guide on How to remove malware from the infected computer.
2) The computer freezes on startup or does not allow you to view some files asking to pay a ransom, usually in BitCoin.
This is the signal is clear and unequivocal of a Ransomware, the ugliest type of virus that can hit a computer, which does not allow access to personal files making them encrypted with a password that can be recovered only by paying according to the instructions on the screen.
In this regard, we saw in another article how to protect yourself from ransomware and Cryptolocker viruses.
3) The computer seems slow or worse than yesterday
A less obvious signal to be studied is that of a decrease in computer performance, which, as explained in the guide on the causes and solutions of a slow computer.
There is no doubt that some malware may occupy CPU power or the fact that the virus has connected our PC to a botnet, that is, a computer network used by a remote hacker for various types of operations such as DDos attacks.
More obvious signs may be access denied for the registry, for the task manager, for security settings in the Control Panel, for Windows Defender options.
4) Appearance of new desktop icons related to games or programs that we have never installed .
If you see icons of new programs running on the notification area at the bottom right or on the desktop, you need to remove them immediately and then also do an antimalware check to be sure that among the various unwanted software there was not even a virus.
5) The browser (Chrome, Firefox) has problems, opens unsolicited web pages, pop-ups appear continuously and more advertising banners appear than usual on websites.
If opening the internet it seems that advertising has increased a lot of any site you visit, there is probably a virus that works from adware, which opens advertisements and pop-ups, which redirects the requests of websites showing others or preventing access to the usual ones.
Other signs may be the sudden change of the default search engine, the first page and the appearance of new extensions buttons on Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer.
Given that if there is a virus, it must be removed in the right way (as we will see at the end of this post), against adware and advertising extensions, it is necessary to scan with the ADWCleaner program.
6) Our email or Facebook accounts send messages automatically
This type of behavior, more and more frequent, occurs when, for example, spam posts appear on our Facebook profile not written by us or if messages addressed to our friends leave in the Facebook chat. Today, hijacking your email account is more difficult if you don't use an email client, even if it can still happen. In these cases the virus may have affected the web browser and in addition to an antivirus check, it may be that it can also be solved with ADWClenear as explained in the previous point.
If you want to stay safe and secure, you can always install an antivirus for Chrome and Firefox to check every link on the internet.
In these cases it is also advisable to change the password of Facebook or the site that is sending spam, because the account may have been hacked.
Also you need to check and remove unknown insecure applications on your Facebook account.
7) If the antivirus no longer opens, it does not update and remains blocked
A fairly certain sign of the presence of viruses in the computer is the fact that the antivirus no longer responds and does not perform even manually forced scans. In these cases you don't even need to install another antivirus, because it will still be rendered ineffective by the malware.
The solution, as explained in another article, comes from the rKill tool, capable of terminating any non-native Windows process and, therefore, canceling the effects of the infection.
Conclusion
Finally, whenever there is one of these signals and you suspect that your computer has been infected with a virus, you need to proceed as explained in the guide to Clean your PC from viruses (and prevent other infections in the future) .
