Viruses and Malware have become an unfortunate result of the connected world we live in. The programmers who write them make money by using your computer for their purposes and/or stealing your information from your computer.  Most of the time, the writers use tricks to get you to go to an infected webpage or to open an installer file.  Sometimes, they exploit security vulnerabilites in the operating system or web browser to install the malicious code.  Having an up-to-date antivirus software can help, but unfortunately it is not 100% effective.   Most of the modern viruses will disable antivirus software once they work their way onto your computer.   Once it reaches this point, your best bet is to have one of our experienced technicians take a look at your machine.

When your computer comes into our office, the first thing we do is back up your data, so that the removal process does not endanger your important information.  We retain your data for 90 days to insure you have enough time to verify it is all present when you retrieve your computer.   Many of the new viruses are impossible to remove with the computer running because the virus starts itself and watches for programs trying to kill it.  We remove your drive and scan it with other computers to work around this.  We run multiple scans using several different types of software.  We also manually look through the computer for traces of malware.  Once we put your drive back into your computer, we run additional scans to make sure the virus has not returned.  We can then install new, up-to-date antivirus software for you if you don’t have any or if it has expired.