viruses Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Real-Time vs. On-Demand: Antivirus protection explained

Posted on August 16, 2025

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I’ve been receiving questions from folks who are confused about the terms Real-Time and On-Demand in regards to antivirus protection, so I thought it might be helpful to explain the difference between them here.

Both real-time and on-demand antivirus protection are important for keeping your computer free of viruses and other forms of malware, but while they are closely-related, they operate in very different ways. [Read more…]

Q&A: How can I tell if my computer has a virus?

Posted on July 21, 2025

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Question from Geneva: I keep reading about all the computer viruses going around and how they can cause you a bunch of problems.

I’m a complete dummy when it comes to this stuff, Rick. How can I find out if my computer is infected? [Read more…]

How to ask for a second opinion after a clean virus scan (and why you should)

Posted on July 16, 2025

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Over the years I’ve worked on lots of computers that exhibited all the classic signs of a malware infection.

And as you might expect, many of the owners of those machines insisted that the problem couldn’t possibly be malware because they regularly scan their systems with antivirus programs.

But when I ran my own scans on those systems, I often discovered that they were indeed infected, some of them with dozens of viruses, spyware objects, malicious toolbars and other digital nasties.

How could that be? [Read more…]

Is your PC is acting weird? It’s probably malware.

Posted on May 28, 2025

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Has your computer started acting weird all of a sudden? For example…

Do web pages take forever to load?

Are you getting irritating pop-ups on a regular basis?

Does your browser load strange pages that you didn’t intentionally visit?

Has your home page or default search engine been mysteriously changed without your permission?

If you answered yes to one or more of the above questions, your PC is probably infected with malware. [Read more…]

Q&A: Is it safe to completely disable Windows updates?

Posted on April 6, 2025

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Question from Michael: I recently bought a new desktop computer to replace the one I’ve been using for the past six years.

It seems like the updates I’ve been installing on this new machine have all been filled with bugs because almost every time I install them something goes wrong.

The last time it happened my nephew had to completely reinstall Windows for me.

I’d like to completely disable the installation of updates on the new PC. Is it safe to do that? [Read more…]