Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Virus, spyware and other types of malware are here to stay. Our main problem is becoming a little paranoid about the subject. One of the reasons that drives to this situation is that many people–even skilled ones–are not aware of the symptoms of having a malware infection.

This post is just a basic list, I am preparing a more advanced article about the same topic so take this one as an introduction.

The best way to know if your computer is infected by some sort of malware is by using an antivirus to detect infections. So, what is the point in this list? Sometimes, the security utilities have problems detecting some sort of virus, as happens with the more sophisticated viruses out there.

Slow performance could be seen a sign of infection, but as there are so many reasons that can drive to this behaviour is not included in the list.

Toolbars

If you see a new toolbar in your browser and your antispyware cannot remove it visit the following link:

5 Easy Ways to Uninstall Toolbars In Internet Explorer 8

Pop-ups

In early days of Internet even normal web pages used more than one window. Now this is not seen like a good practice; so if you are seeing more and more of these windows, you can be sure you have malicious software on your system.

DNS change

Have you entered the same address and your browser is showing another page? Viruses like to change your DNS servers to control the pages you are visiting and even replace popular sites like banking sites with their own sites that are designed to collect your login credentials.

Error Messages when Opening IE

Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are well-known by their plugins. These are just little programs that add functionality to the browser. An abnormal functionality can drive to crashes but sometimes is malware so if you notice error messages when using your browser then this could be a sign of malware infection.

A strange Home Page

Viruses and other sort of malware love to change the home page of your browser. If your homepage is changed all of a sudden, you may have a virus (or you went to a site that annoyingly pops up a message offering you the chance to make it your homepage.)

Operating system related problems

It’s very common that your security tool, antivirus or antispyware will remove the malware but it doesn’t repair the operating system. Thus, strange behaviour can be a sign of a virus infection:

1. An error message is displayed when you are opening an application.
2. Problems opening a drive using Windows Explorer.

The symptoms are countless, if you know more, please comment so others can know what to look out for.

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