I Think I Have Computer Virus

I think my computer has a virus and it won’t boot up. What are the top 3 ways to troubleshoot?

When you say won’t boot up, do you mean won’t boot into Windows or it won’t start at all?What makes you think you have a virus?If you do, and you can’t boot into Windows, you can try to do Last Known Good Configuration from the boot menu. Before windows starts, press F8 repeatedly. This will bring you to the menu allowing you to choose safe mode and other options. You may first want to try safe mode to see if you can get into Windows.If that doesn’t work, try the menu again and go a little further down to Last Known Good configuration.If that also fails, depending on your level of experience with computers, you have three choices.1 - Build a rescue disk that will allow you to clean your computerHere is a good guide for that -How to create a USB rescue kit for your PC2 - format and reinstall (Is your data all backed up somewhere else?)3 - Take to a computer repair place for helpHope this helps.

I think I might have installed a virus on my computer, but my scanner is not detecting anything. What should I do?

There is a lot of confusion about malware in general. For instance, the difference between diagnosing and cleaning an ACTIVE malware infection versus preventing it in the first place.If an antivirus application that was installed on your computer failed to block the infection, how can you trust it to REMOVE that infection? You can’t, and here’s why:After the malware infects your system, the first things it typically goes after are disabling or corrupting your active malware protection, disabling and deleting your backups so that you can’t restore your computer back to a pre-infection state, and many malware also create policies that block the installation of new antivirus software.Because each type of infection can be very different, utilizing different vectors to infect you and exhibiting different types of behavior, there is no universal set of instructions that anyone can give you to remove the infection.In general, having an up to date system with up to date security software, and practicing safety on the internet in downloading and running files are the best ways to prevent an infection.I ran a test PC for a year, doing normal browsing, without any antivirus installed, and never got an infection. (I did have ad blocking and script blocking plugins installed in my browser)In most cases, you don’t get infected for doing nothing. You get infected by clicking on things. Limit your number of clicks, and you lessen the likelihood that you’ll get infected. Having good plugins installed in your browser prevents “drive by” scripts from infecting you. Running your browsers in a sandbox is an even more extreme method of stopping malware from attacking you.The most insecure part of the whole computer is YOU. Without YOU, your PC could probably run fine while being connected to the internet for years. It’s YOU, clicking on things, that causes stuff to go wrong. The only reliable security you can have on your PC is to teach yourself better browsing habits on the internet, and doing as little clicking as possible.

People who make computer viruses: do you really think I'm going to click on that "I won an iPhone" thing?

That's the first test, and you "failed" :)You know why those Advance-fee scam emails have such bad spelling and ridiculous-sounding stories? Because they want to filter the people that will respond to the "offer".Machine time is free - they can send an email to every person on Earth in a day, no problem - but human time is not. Scammers have limited capacity, too, and would rather only get contacted by people that are gullible enough to believe the story in the email.Of course, this "you've won an iPhone" thing is rather mild in comparison, so it's probably more "gray area", like mentioned in Leonid S. Knyshov's answer, but still, if you wouldn't click it, then you're not a good target.P.S. There's an organization called 419 Eaters, which are people dedicated to wasting the scammer's time by pretending to fall for their scams.