Adelaide Computer Virus Removal

Viruses, adware, spyware, crimeware and other malware are a scourge and can cause havoc with your PC computer’s operating system. A computer virus can take a number of forms and the effects can vary from the annoying and inconvenient to the entire destruction of your desktop or laptop computer’s ability to function, and can even lead to a serious invasion of your privacy resulting in identity theft or illegal accessing of your bank accounts.

There are steps that you can take to protect yourself against viruses and malware, but many users don’t take the threat seriously enough and so only spring into action once it’s too late and their PC or Apple Mac computer has been corrupted by a virus or piece of spyware.

It is feasible to attempt to remove an infection yourself, but this is almost impossible on any computer once it has a virus, as the malicious code responsible for the virus is usually able to defend itself against removal, or is designed to be able to reactivate itself later. If you choose to try and counter the infection by reformatting your HDD and reloading your whole system yourself, you need to be prepared to spend an enormous amount of time reloading all of your software, reconfiguring your applications, email, web browsers and so on, with the end result that you may simply be reloading the virus that caused the problem in the first place.

At Computer Geeks Australia, we are home computer repair specialists in the thorough and effective removal of computer viruses, spyware, crimeware and other forms of malware (or malicious software code). Our computer repair services can restore the integrity of your Windows operating system through a painstaking and exceedingly thorough three-stage process in our workshop.

The first stage sees one of our Adelaide computer doctors undertake a preliminary diagnosis of your machine, which is then followed by a primary scan of your hard drive disk (HDD) while it is connected to one of our diagnostic servers. This first stage alone takes several hours, utilising several scanners and being repeated until all of the malicious code that is present in your system is identified and removed.

Following this, in the second stage we refit your HDD back into laptop or desktop computer, load new software, and then repeat the scanning process until we achieve a clean scan.

Finally, in the third stage, our experienced computer technician will make any repairs to your PC that are necessary, restore your security protocols and scrub the registry of any remnant references. This system maintenance and repair should finally see your machine back in working order and virus free. In order to help you keep it this way, we’ll also advise you on important steps you can take to avoid any further infections in the future.

It takes a good deal of time for this procedure to be done effectively. If someone claims to be able remove viruses and infections from your PC completely on site and in a couple of hours, you can be fairly sure that the malware will not have been removed entirely and that before long the problem will return.

In addition to removing all kinds of malware from your PC or Apple laptop, including computer viruses, spyware, crimeware and adware, our Adelaide computer technician will update your existing anti-virus programs and advise you on how to prevent further infection in the future.

How do I Know I Have a Computer Virus?

Computer viruses are written in order to avoid detection and to make removal difficult, and so because of the way they are designed and disseminated it may not be immediately obvious that you have contracted an infection on your PC or Mac. However, there are some tell-tale signs to look out for that may suggest that all is not right with your laptop or desktop computer:

• Your PC has suddenly become noticeably slower or is unresponsive
• The boot time increases significantly, or Windows unexpectedly reboots or shuts down
• You lose your internet or home network access
• Your home page and/or preferred search engine unexpectedly changes
• Suspicious pop-ups start to appear
• You get diverted (hijacked) to other sites
• New toolbars appear although you haven’t downloaded them
• You get desktop warnings (known as scareware) saying that you have numerous infections
• Your Windows automatic updates are no longer working
• New sites that you haven’t visited appear in your favourites
• You have unexpectedly high internet usage and downloads
• Some of your desktop icons have disappeared
• You are unable to open certain applications or programs
• Your virus scanner is unexpectedly disabled