How to tell if you have a malware infection
Unfortunately, many PC users don’t always practice safe surfing or keep their anti-malware defenses up to snuff. Even computers with anti-malware programs sometimes get infected. Trojan horses and spyware don’t always have the signatures that anti-virus programs can recognize. Malware writers are getting very sophisticated and it isn’t always easy to detect an infection. So how would you know if you were infected? You can begin by keeping an eye out for some basic symptoms. Microsoft has given a list of possible indications to look for. This list is somewhat simplistic and is only a beginning but here it is:
• Your computer runs more slowly than normal
• Your computer stops responding or locks up often
• Your computer crashes and restarts every few minutes
• Your computer restarts on its own and then fails to run normally
• Applications on your computer don’t work correctly
• Disks or disk drives are inaccessible
• You can’t print correctly
• You see unusual error messages
• You see distorted menus and dialog boxes
In a future post, I’ll discuss how to use some monitoring tools like Process Explorer to look for malware activity in a more detailed way.
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