CX School, SCH.cx – Does Your Windows Computer Have a Virus? This Is How To Check. Windows computers do sometimes get infected with viruses and other malicious software, but not every slow or abnormal PC is infected with malware. This is a way to check if you really have a virus and if the suspicious process is dangerous.
What are the signs of a virus on Your Windows?
Poor performance, application crashes, and computer crashes can sometimes be signs of severe damage caused by viruses or another type of malware. However, this is not always the case: there are many other causes of problems that can slow down your PC.
Likewise, just because your PC is operating normally does not mean that it is free of malware. Viruses from ten years ago were often pranks, raging, and took up a lot of system resources. Modern malware is more likely to lurch silently in the background, trying to evade detection, thereby capturing your credit card number and other personal information. In other words, modern malware is usually created by criminals to make money, and carefully crafted malware does not cause any obvious PC problems at all.
Nevertheless, sudden PC performance degradation may still indicate that you have malware. Strange applications on the system may also indicate malware-however, there is no guarantee again that malware is involved. Some applications will pop up a command prompt window when they are updated, so the strange window will flash to the screen and disappear quickly, which may be a normal part of the legitimate software on the system.
Without actually scanning your PC for malware, there is no evidence that suits everyone. Sometimes malware can cause PC problems, and sometimes, it performs well when it successfully completes its goals in the background. The only way to determine whether there is malware is to check the system.
How to check if a process is a virus at Windows
You may want to know if your computer is infected with a virus because you see a strange process in the Windows Task Manager, you can open it by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc or right-clicking on the Windows taskbar and selecting “Task Manager” process.
It’s normal to see a lot of processes here-if you see a smaller list, click “More Details”. Many of these processes have strange names. That’s normal. Windows contains many background processes. Your PC manufacturer adds some background processes, and the applications you install often add them.
Malware that performs poorly usually consumes a lot of CPU, memory, or disk resources, and may stand out here. If you are curious about whether a particular program is malicious, right-click on it in Task Manager and select “Search Online” to find more information.
If information about malware appears during the search, it means you may have malware. However, don’t assume that your computer is virus-free just because the process looks legitimate. There may be a process that says it is “Google Chrome” or “chrome.exe”, but it may simply be that the malware imitates Google Chrome located in other folders on the system. If you are concerned that you may have malware, we recommend performing an anti-malware scan.
The “Online Search” option is not available on Windows 7. If you use Windows 7, you must insert the process name into Google or other search engines.
How to scan for viruses in your Windows
By default, Windows 10 always uses the integrated Windows security application (also known as Windows Defender) to scan for malware on PCs. However, you can perform a manual scan.
On Windows 10, open the “Start” menu, type “security”, and click the “Windows Security” shortcut to open it. You can also go to Settings> Update and Security> Windows Security> Turn on Windows Security.
To perform an anti-malware scan, click “Virus and Threat Protection”.
Click “Quick Scan” to scan the system for malware. Windows Security will perform the scan and provide the results. If it finds any malicious software, it will automatically delete it from your PC .
If you want a second opinion (it is always a good idea if you are worried, because you may be infected with malware and the main antivirus did not find anything), you can also perform a scan using other security applications.
