If you have an updated antivirus, when a virus hits your computer and tries to infect it, a pop up appears on the right side at the bottom of the screen that warns about the treatment of the threat. This should be normal, but it can also happen that a more subtle malware affects Windows without being detected by the antivirus and this would become a big problem.
While some viruses and other types of malware are designed simply to cause problems and mess on the comptuer, today's most common malware is silent, harmless to the overall functioning of the system, but capable of stealing personal data and passing it on to some criminal computer scientist.
Whenever you see the antivirus message where it is written that an infection or malware is detected, you need to be careful.
Today's good antivirus products remove the virus without asking the user to do anything, simply by giving notice of what has happened.
If the warning is the consequence of a user-defined action, such as downloading or installing an infected program, the antivirus almost always removes the infected file before it can cause problems .
The same thing happens if the notice appears during the visit on a web page.
Unfortunately, however, it should be noted that when " a virus is detected " it means that the virus has done nothing and the computer has been saved .
For security you can open the administration window of the antivirus and check the infection report, the name of the virus and where it is written which file has been quarantined or has been removed.
As said several times, however, the antivirus is not able to recognize every infection and it can happen that someone hits the computer.
In the guide on how to know if your computer is infected with viruses or malware, I have explained the main symptoms of when you take a virus .
To be sure that everything is affixed to the computer, however, there are some simple ways to ask for a second opinion besides that of the antivirus.
All major antivirus vendors also have a website with an online tool for scanning your computer such as ESET Online Scanner.
You can also download a second antivirus beyond the one already installed, which act as portable emergency antivirus scanners that do not require installation.
This allows you to scan with another antivirus without going through the hassle of uninstalling the current antivirus.
In fact, it is not possible to install more than one antivirus program on a computer, with some exceptions (see Immunet Protect and Panda Cloud Antivirus).
If the scanner reports a problem and your computer is infected with a virus, this is what you need to do
1) First of all, you have to try to eliminate the virus with the removal tool, restart the computer and repeat the scan to see if it succeeded.
The antivirus may not be able to remove the infected file if it has replaced a system file or if it acts as a rootkit, loading itself at startup and then disappearing from view.
The fact is that malware, if it affects the computer and acts within it, has the ability to replicate itself in different areas, go deep and make the antivirus ineffective.
2) In these cases, starting the PC in safe mode can certainly help.
In safe mode, in fact, Windows does not load third-party software (therefore not even viruses) and you are able to solve the problem using a malware removal tool.
If you need Internet access in safe mode, select safe mode with network services in the options menu.
Before performing the virus scan, it is advisable to use the small rKill tool, capable of stopping any infected process and making a virus of any type removable.
Next you need to scan with at least two of these malware removal tools :
- SuperAntiSpyware
- MalwareBytes Anti-malware.
- Hitman Pro.
3) If the computer does not seem usable even in safe mode or if the virus was so rooted that no antivirus could be cleaned, then a recovery CD boot can be used.
It is always an antivirus which, however, instead of scanning on Windows, does it before the system starts.
In another article it is explained how to scan the virus when booting the computer with Rescue Disks on a USB stick .
4) The final option, if you are unable to remove a virus or if the system has been damaged, is to restore the computer to factory settings if there is a recovery CD.
Otherwise, a reset of Windows must be made by returning to the initial settings which, if performed correctly, will not delete the files in memory.
In these cases, however, it is always convenient to save all computer data as written in the guide on how to save all files and reinstall Windows.
