My PC may have a virus. What should I do?
A couple months back I noticed my PC behaving weirdly, browsers I was using were consuming a lot of memory (Firefox - 1.4gb+, Chrome - 2gb+) without much tabs open, but I didn't think much of it at the time. A few weeks ago, I tried to do a scan with Windows Defender to see if it was a virus that was causing these problems, but I wasn't allowed entry to the Virus and Threat Protection part of Windows Defender because my "IT administrator had limited access to some areas of this app". I've also noticed some other weird things, like my laptop performing much slower, my cursor being set larger than the default every time I restart my laptop or go into full-screen on any app, the blue loading circle next to my cursor popping up even when I'm not doing anything, my fans always being very loud, my battery draining extremely quickly, and my wallpaper randomly being set to black.. I'm not very tech-literate so I'm kind of lost on what to do. Re-installing windows and choosing not to keep all my files seems like the most logical option for me (using the windows option, no USB). I'd greatly appreciate any advice!
9 Replies
Use a USB
thats the best option
the browser thing is normal, browsers use a lot of memory just in general
the rest of that coouuuuld be normal but yea, your best bet is to reinstall your operating system
if i had to guess, you've installed a crypto miner on your system
i mean
delete the browser
reinstall it
i have no idea g
It strictly being the browsers kind of raise the chance of you just needing to reinstall it
is it okay if I do it through the windows option, or should I reinstall via USB
Not much of an expert, but i would go with USB option since it gets the job done 100% and leaves everything behind.
okay, so USB it is
is it possible for my onedrive to be infected
and can it come back post reinstall
It isn t 100% clean?
If you used it to install ur windows and did it correctly, it shouldn t be corrupted or infected with anything.
That i don t know.
Either you do something or you do nothing
given how obvious it's being, id say try it first
if it comes back, you'll know
if it doesn't come back, it won't