Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
As I explained in this post, both Windows 10 and Windows 11 have a built-in antivirus engine called Microsoft Defender.
And truth be told, it actually does a pretty good job at keeping your PC virus-free.
But like all other antivirus apps, Microsoft Defender isn’t perfect. It’s always possible that a digital nasty will slip through and infect your system. [Read more…]
Question from Arlen: I bought a new laptop in August 2022 and paid the people at Best Buy to install Webroot antivirus on it.
This machine has always worked great but a few weeks ago it locked up on me with a message saying it had been taken over by a hacker.
I was finally able to shut it down by holding the power button in but when I turned it back on it went right back to that same screen.
I took it to Best Buy and the technician said it had a virus and they were going to charge me $150 to remove it. [Read more…]
I’m often asked if free antivirus apps are as effective at protecting a Windows PC from virus infections as their “paid” counterparts.
And I must say, that’s an excellent question.
Back in the early days of home computing my answer would have been a huge NO because the free antivirus programs available at the time were indeed inferior to the commercial programs.
But that has changed over the years…
Question from Ramie: I downloaded a photo last night from one of the free photo websites that I use.
While I was retrieving the photo from the Downloads folder I noticed there was a file named setup.exe in there.
I haven’t downloaded a software program in well over a year so I don’t know how that file got in there.
Do you think it might be a virus?
Question from Oliver: I’ve been using Malwarebytes for several years with good results but it recently started causing my computer (Lenovo laptop with Windows 10) to freeze up.
I know it’s Malwarebytes that’s causing the freeze-ups because when I use Autoruns to prevent it from loading automatically with Windows the problem goes away.
I did some research and found out that Malwarebytes apparently doesn’t play well with certain computers running Windows 10, so I’d like to just remove it from my hard drive.
The problem is when I try to uninstall it I get an error saying it wasn’t successfully uninstalled.
Can you tell me what I need to do in order to completely remove Malwarebytes from my PC?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]