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I think my computer has a virus, and I am clueless when it comes to this stuff

WashWash Sweet ChristmasRegistered User regular
edited March 2008 in Help / Advice Forum
Forgive me if this sounds vague, but when it comes to computers I know close to nothing.

Anyway, for a while now my computer's been going slow, but that didn't surprise me since I download a lot of stuff and my anti-virus thing hasn't been working for quite some time now (I know, it's pretty stupid not renewing those things but for some reason I never prioritized doing it.)

Well, what's got me posting here today is that this folder called autoedits that appeared in place of the comic I just tried to download won't allow me to delete it. Every time I try to delete it or rename it, a message pops up that says "Cannot delete autoedits: It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again." Another thing that happened was that my anti-spyware stopped updating, and I've noticed a big decrease in the number of things it catches per scan.

So when I've got this folder I can't delete, outdated anti-virus, and anti-spyware that won't update, I feel it's time to do something about it. Like I said, though, I know nothing about computers. Most of my friends would say it's time to reformat at a time like this, but I've never reformated, nor have I ever asked what that implied.

So, PA, what exactly should I do to fix my computer?

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Wash on

Posts

  • ReznikReznik Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    My recommendation is a healthy dose of AVG Free antivirus followed by Spybot Search and Destroy with a dash of Ad-Aware.

    Reznik on
    Do... Re.... Mi... Ti... La...
    Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
    Forget it...
  • ShadeShade Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    While all of those are good programs they are better at preventative measures. First figure out what you have:

    Pandas online scanner its free, use IE though:

    http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/activescan/

    then grab a trial of Trend to clean, and maybe Ewedo. Kaspersky if you really have trouble.

    http://us.trendmicro.com/us/downloads/home-and-homeoffice/

    http://www.kaspersky.com/

    Shade on
  • TavTav Irish Minister for DefenceRegistered User regular
    edited March 2008
    Do you know what autoedits is? I've had folders (mostly related to torrents that I downloaded) that wouldn't delete. Try Killbox to delete it. It's a very powerful tool, do don't use it for deleting anything that you might need or is irreplaceable since you won't be getting them back.

    I'd recommend doing what Reznik said, too. Not to fix this problem, but just for general computer cleaning. AVG updates automatically whenever you log into Windows (If there's a patch available) and generally takes in the region of 20 seconds.

    Tav on
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