viruses Archives - Page 2 of 12

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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Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

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…]

Why you shouldn’t send suspicious files to the Recycle Bin

Posted on February 18, 2025

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If you’ve been using Microsoft Windows for a while you probably know that deleting a file doesn’t really remove it from the system.

Instead, it’s actually moved to a special folder called the Recycle Bin.

That’s generally a good thing because we all occasionally delete a file by mistake or wish we hadn’t deleted a file at some later point in time.

Having our deleted files go into the Recycle Bin makes it easy to restore one of them to it’s original folder in either of the above-mentioned cases.

But unfortunately some files can become problematic if we allow them to sit idly in the Recycle Bin.

[Read more…]

Reminder: Why you should never ‘Unsubscribe’ from SPAM emails

Posted on January 13, 2025

Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter

Like most everyone else, you probably receive SPAM and phishing emails all the time.

And despite the existence of the Can-Spam act, this scourge of the Internet seems to actually be getting worse instead of better.

If you ever happen to accidentally open one of these obnoxious messages you might be tempted to click the “Unsubscribe” link located near the bottom of the message to have your email address removed from their mailing list.

Whatever you do, don’t click that link! Read on to find out why… [Read more…]