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CLEAN UP DRIVES
CLEAN- UP DRIVES
HOW TO RID YOUR PC OF VIRUSES
A virus can slow down your pc, corrupt files or delete them altogether. If that happens, some technicians may tell you to forget about your data, format your hard drive and star afresh (happened to me twice).But that may not be necessary if you keep a new antivirus (different from the one your pc already has) handy and follow these steps:
- Close all programs and fire up the antivirus you have installed (if you don’t have any, skip to step 3.)In the antivirus scanner settings, enable deep mode scanning. You may see a “warning” that says this process is slow; ignore it. Now look for the action option-what to do if a virus is found. Set this to quarantine, and do not set it to delete just yet. Start the scan and leave your computer alone till that’s done. You could even turn off the monitor.
- Turn monitor on. If scanning has finished, openup the quarantine report, and see how many files have been quarantined: the dangerous ones. Even if nothing comes out of this scan, proceed to the next step.
- Shut down and restart. Keep the f5 key pressed while restarting to bring up a list of start up options. Choose a safe mode. Once in safemode, you’ll see a message telling you some programs won’t work. Click OK.
- This is important. Go to Add/Remove programs to uninstall your antivirus software as it may be infected too. Restart in safe mode again. Keep the f5 key pressed.
- Once restarted, insert the antivirus CD-don’t use a pen drive for this -and install the new antivirus. Once installed, run deep scan again. It will be faster this time because the pc is in safe mode and most of the infected files are already quarantine.
- If you see some more files, move them all to quarantine and then shut down the computer. Restart normally.
- Go online and update the new antivirus. After that, run a full scan again. It may find more threats, but that’s unlikely with a new antivirus.
Your pc is now clean! If you still have trouble, you will either need to format the pc or get an expert to clean it for you.
