Guys, I am seriously worried.
As I was just taking care of school, I saw a Windows notification saying that a Trojan virus had been detected, and that made me very worried. I tried removing it, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lose my laptop, because I have no way to do school, write my stories, and play my video games. I have nothing else to do, as my laptop is basically my life. I don’t want to lose my laptop, and I have no money to pay for repairs or the skills to remove a virus.
Window’s anti-virus is not good- and many anti-viruses are just as annoying as actual viruses. There are, however, anti-virus softwares that can help you out here. I would recommend Malwarebytes:
It’s a free download, and you should be able to run a scan and remove the Trojan with relative ease
Get the MacBook and forget viruses and windoze crap.
If windows detected a trojan, it stands to reason it quarantined it right? There’s a good chance you’re probably fine and just need to go into windows defender and confirm you want to delete it (I assume that’s how it works with Windows Defender).
I’d do another scan with another antivirus to be safe, and be more cautious about what websites I visit, what files I download, connecting strange USBs or other devices, just being cautious of the different likely vectors that led to exposure.
Also, backup your computer. At least your important files.
Windows Defender will tell you what it detected if you go and look. It’s more than likely nothing, unless you’ve been downloading things from sites you’re not familiar with. Generally speaking, you don’t just get a virus out of nowhere. It’s either a false positive, or as the post above says, you need to be more careful about sites you visit and what you download.
The opinions on this topic can get a bit heated but the windows defender is a great anti virus tool and if its detected you already got to the first step.
It then asked you what you want to do with it and if you read the prompts you can manage to get through it without a problem. I would think about how you might have been infected and either use additional protection in the browser with addons like nojavascript or similar.
There are enough articles to get you educated on that.
Hope you can use your laptop again without being scared of it.
It’s an old myth that Apple computers don’t get viruses, but it’s absolutely not true. Any computer that can connect to a network can get a virus
True story
Everything that connects with everything can get some
I don’t download anything from suspicious sites. For example, most of the games I have on my laptop are from Steam, with the exception of Fortnite.
What was the last thing you did before Windows Defender flagged the virus? Sounds like a false positive. But as I said. You can open windows defender and check what it flagged/quarantined.
I was taking care of my studies for college.
It’s an old myth that any computer that can connect to a network can get a virus. You have to be out of this world idiot to get a virus when you using a Mac.
These posts aren’t really on topic, and they’re far more combative in tone than they need to be. Can you take a step back please and use less harsh language? Thanks!
You didn’t necessarily do anything “suspicious” knowingly. Sometimes suspicious sites masquerade convincingly as legitimate sites, or legitimate sites will have users who uploaded something suspicious and it didn’t get caught, or an email that looked like it came from a legitimate sender had something nasty, or a legitimate sender had their accounts compromised and so technically it’s coming from your mom or friend’s genuine email, but it was sent by someone nefarious. Some ads can be vectors for malware too. And that’s before we even get into USBs, phones, and other devices that can be connected to your computer after having been connected to other computers or have their own independent web browsing/download capability.
I run the phish testing campaigns for my company and our clients: even tech savvy people who know better can occasionally be fooled by an email that looked legitimate.
Could also be a false positive of course. I think you said you’re a programming student, so depending what you’re programming it could’ve even potentially been a false positive from one of your own projects.
A thing I’m now getting a little worried about is that my laptop has been ejecting my Seagate portable drive for no reason. I don’t know what’s wrong with my laptop, or if I’ll ever play video games on my laptop ever again.
Portable drives have short lives- depending on long you’ve had it, you may consider getting a new one and cloning it over. Should be fairly cheap. Might also be worth checking the cable- cables get shorts all the time, it’ll be extremely cheap to replace the cable and if you’re still having problems, then you can one the drive. Start with the cable, though
I can still access my drive, and nothing has been lost on it.
That’s good news. It’s probably the cable then, so like a $10 fix. 