Does anybody have any suggestions as to how to fix my computer and get rid of any viruses that it has if the anti-virus protection seems to not be doing its job? This is really stressing me out
Anti-virus software misses stuff sometimes, even when it’s good. Try to figure out, if you can, whether it’s just working for crap or if it seems to have made an honest mistake. If it’s just sucking, try a different anti-virus. I like Avast Anti-Virus–I find it has minimal conflicts with other software and keeps the harassment to a minimum (some anti-virus programs get so annoying with pop-ups, reminders and ads for the paid version that they’re barely worth the trouble e.g. Norton, McAfee and AVG)–but these days if you’re on Windows, then Windows Defender is pretty good stuff and integrates smoothly with the other operations of your computer.
Also worth noting: viruses are just one kind of malware. There are trojans, malicious cookies, and other stuff too. This is part of the reason stuff can slip past your anti-virus program.
For dealing with the malware that gets past your anti-virus program, I used to use Lavasoft Ad-Aware free version, but these days it’s a pain in the butt that harasses me with pop-up reminders every time I turn around. Try MalwareBytes, which you can also get for free (click ‘download’ rather than ‘buy’).
If these don’t do the trick, then you’ll need to move on to more advanced stuff that involves researching what’s going wrong to identify the critter your computer has caught and how to fix it.
Also do a disk cleanup and maybe a hard drive defrag, and double-check how much free space your hard drive has left (with Windows, if it doesn’t have at least a few gigs free, then you’re going to start running into problems). If your computer is being slow and jittery, sometimes it’s just a performance issue that can be fixed with some regular maintenance.
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