Check your system for any suspicious activity or unusual behavior.
Check your system for any suspicious activity or unusual behavior.
It seems you're questioning the value of antivirus solutions without solid evidence. To strengthen your point, it would help to know why you believe what you do about WD, Avast, Kaspersky, etc., and where beginners can find comparable guidance. Your stance seems to suggest Windows already offers sufficient protection, which clashes with the security principles I've learned over time. I'm revisiting antivirus options because I recognize that depending on a single program for safety is flawed—security must be built in multiple layers. This applies to software, hardware, and physical safeguards alike. I've already tried AVG and heard Malwarebytes is a solid choice alongside others. Ideally, having a primary antivirus with real-time protection plus additional scans would be best, but running multiple RT protections can cause conflicts. Could others share their thoughts on effective antivirus software? There are so many recommendations online that it's hard to trust any one source. If you know of a moderator or someone who missed this thread, please let me know or consider moving it here. Thanks!
It might help if you continue reading my next update on that thread, as it explains why I'm writing this.
Where exactly can I locate that? The only comments I see in this discussion (the thread you started, right?) are the ones I made—I replied to yours and now this one. I checked your profile, but it doesn’t display much activity from earlier. Do you have a reference link? I’m still getting the hang of this forum and its layout. It feels a bit overwhelming. Also, any recommendations for reliable antivirus programs? I tried Bitdefender, but it blocked the free AV Scanner unless I removed AVG. That’s confusing—LunaCy seems to handle that well. So maybe I should uninstall AVG first, then reinstall Bitdefender in silent mode? That way it can coexist without conflicts. I’m surprised people are giving up on AVG altogether! This is really new for me.
A new Chris Titus Tech video provides a concise summary of today’s anti-virus landscape.
That user is actually correct. I’d go that route myself before bothering with an in place upgrade, let alone Microsoft’s “roll back”. Some people have better luck but I have my own reservations… I also noticed a lot of people posting about scanning and such but forget to mention doing so under safe mode. Running a scan in safe mode is hands down the most reliable way to “seek and destroy”. Simply hold shift, hit shutdown, restart. You can release shift after that youll get a menu shortly after, hit advanced, then (I forget) the option that says stuff about command line, unsigned drivers yada yada once it reboots hit the number corresponding to safe mode without networking. U can do it with, but I go without simply to eliminate variables. after it boots up do a “deep scan”. Depending on ur pc it may take half an hour, may take a few. It’s also advised to scan everything, even that E drive After it’s done go into taskman, click startup tab and disable anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. I don’t even let iTunes helper boot up let alone defender. Then pop open the run thing (win+r) and type in msconfig. This handy guy shows everything *else* taskman don’t. repeat the above back to win+r type in services.msc this is a list of SERVICES that boot with your pc. Careful here as disabling some stuff will give you issues (under a regular windows session) but if that happens, just do the same and re-enable it. Anywho an easy way to shuffle through all this junk is up to you. U can filter by manufacturer (Microsoft services) or their current state. That is, enabled, delayed startup, or disabled. without using any antivirus I’ve resolved plenty of adverse issues with this method. Plus if your in safe mode (I’m not on my pc ATM) still u can right click on the service and hit “goto file location”. Could have that mixed up with taskman or msconfig anyway advantage here is file explorer will pop up and bam, there’s a file. But wait, it’s in a strange location. Say c:\users\JSmith\appdata\long-string-of-nonsense\ ive discovered many variants of malware hiding in %appdata% - after all, windows defender among others typically don’t scan here. *typically* disable or delete and move on reboot as usual and things should be fixed, plus much more snappy. while this last part isn’t required i do recommend it since your booting normally go into taskman again, the first tab shows the processes running. Look for anything weird. Maybe an app running you don’t recognize. Maybe an app with a really weird name. Heck, possibly one using a crazy amount of RAM/CPU, sometimes these strange apps will also fluctuate randomly with resources. Say idk .1% load to 20% then to 5% and back to 30%. Ram included. Strange…. right click on it, open file location. Again, if it’s unrecognized (idk \program files\SomethingIveNeverInstalled\blah blah) attempt to just delete it presuming you’ve done “end task” first. Can’t delete what’s actively running if it won’t let you, copy the location (control+c) to a text file. Idk make a new one on your desktop, whatever. Paste it (control+v) then go back into safe mode, open the location saved previously and then delete it. Shouldn’t be an issue far as the E drive suddenly requiring you to have read/write permissions or whatever, no need to make another user. This happens to me all the time, especially when accessing my servers drives from a different machine. here’s an easy fix PRESUMING you don’t have ADDS / a domain setup. If you don’t know what that means, this will do fine: right click on the drive security ”to change permissions click edit” hit edit, if UAC prompts you just say it’s alright (tip: you can disable UAC, hit start and type UAC [enter] it’ll prompt, ok, then move that annoying slider to leave me the bleep alone) hit add a box will pop up, select users or groups Since we dono who or where “you” are, hit advanced another box, hit find now (don’t mess with anything else) the empty area will populate with a bunch of users. Find yours, idk “Bob” or “Kathy”, might even be administrator? (Hold control to select multiple at a time should you desire) ok, ok, ok, ok, till u get back to the securities thing where we started youll see the user(s) you added here select one, and depending on the permissions you set it’ll do so. Read only for Bob? Or read/write/execute for Bob? Hit apply migjt get another dialogue, apply to all folders and subfolders? yes dependjng on how much stuff is on there it may take a little bit. more often than not that’ll solve it. If not you’ll have to do “advanced” and mess with the ownership stuff. Seldom do I need to mess with that but for sake of the article, YouTube object permissions - I know against forum policy to say “go google it”. But it is indeed advanced, proceed with caution on that one lol All that may seem like a lot of work but you’ll get used to it the more times you do it. It’s taken me an hour to type this up on my iPhone but I can do all that junk in under 10 minutes minus loading times ALSO you can do chkdsk and other cmd stuff that person mentioned in safe mode WITH command prompt (u have to select it on boot). I’d advise doing so best of luck, feel free to direct msg me if need be ~cybersecurity pro, 10+ years experience
Avoid using kapersky. They left some odd files in the root after uninstalling. There are many other reasons for this. This forum is useful for anti-virus tools, and running an AV scan is a good idea. No need to be confrontational—it's just a comment in the forum.