As we wrap up cybersecurity month, I have a couple more tips for you. This one is a great tip to tell if your system has been infected by a virus/malware.
Please keep your family and friends safe with this tip!
One of the biggest signs of an infection is if your system starts running VERY slow. Also, if you see apps or icons that you don’t remember installing, or your apps start to crash frequently. One of the worst things, but definitely a tell tail, is if your systems start to overheat.
Here are some steps to make sure you are virus clean:
- Disconnect from the internet. This is vital as it will prevent the virus from phoning home.
- Boot to Safe Mode:
- Restart your system, holding down your Right Shift key as you chose restart
- When the Blue Screen with some options comes up, choose Troubleshoot
- Choose Advanced Options
- Choose Startup Settings
- Select Restart – YOU MIGHT NEED A BITLOCKER KEY
- Choose Safe Mode with Networking
- Run a virus scan.
- Hopefully you have taken my advice in the past to run a good quality antivirus program, and you are not in the situation of needing to do this. However, if you are, install one now.
- Run a full system scan
- Delete or Quarantine the infected files
- Clear temp files
- You can use Disk Cleanup for this.
- Reset browser settings
- Check your startup programs
- Update all software
We also suggest having a backup of your important files. We covered this a few months back, but in case you missed it, use the 3-2-1 rule for backing up:
- 3. copies of your data
- 2. different media types (thumb drive, cloud, CD/DVD – do they make those anymore?)
- 1. off site (the cloud backup takes care of that requirement)
If you are having trouble with any of these steps, or just want to make sure you complete them correctly, we are here to help. Please feel free to reach out to us with your thoughts.
In addition, we also resell system protection and cloud backup.
As always, please feel free to reach out to us if you have any thoughts on this.
Stay Safe Out There!