First signs of a computer virus
The browser shows it first. A search result opens a page nobody chose, the home page resets itself every time you change it back, or a toolbar appears above the tabs that you never installed. All 3 look like settings problems at the start, and a week can go into putting them back by hand before the pattern registers.
The second sign is pop-ups arriving when no browser is open at all. The code is running as a system process with its own schedule by then, and closing a window has no effect on it. Fake driver warnings, a scan window that will not close, and desktop ads belong to that same group.
A fan running on an idle machine
A processor held at full load while the task bar is empty means something is working that you did not start. Mining code and spam relays both need the machine awake and busy, and both behave that way.
Next to that comes the symptom people describe as the computer fighting back. Programs will not launch, the antivirus window closes as soon as it opens, real-time protection switches off and refuses to switch back on, and Windows Update fails with an error that means nothing. An infection protects itself before it does anything else, and blocked security tools and blocked installers are evidence of it.
Startup is worth a look as well. Entries you cannot account for and a proxy setting you never configured are how the thing survives a reboot.
Ransom notes on an infected machine
Files come back renamed with an extension you do not recognize, and a text file is in every folder asking for payment through a wallet address. Every further hour of use gives the encryption more files to work through. Shut the machine down at that point, leave it off, and bring it in. Change the passwords for banking and email from a different device on the way.
Virus removal coverage
Malware clearing is $75 on a computer and $50 on a phone or tablet, quoted as one figure for the whole job. The drive is scanned from outside the installed operating system, out of reach of anything running on it. Startup items, scheduled tasks, services, browser extensions and proxy settings are then worked through by hand, the browsers are reset to a clean profile, and the machine is run afterward to confirm the symptom is gone.
The last part of the job is the part customers remember. The same gap lets the next infection straight back in. You get told how this one arrived, through a download, a browser extension, a mail attachment or a system left months out of date. Our page on virus and malware removal lists what the figure covers at the Broken Arrow bench, and your files stay where they are through all of it.
Cases for an OS restore
3 situations move the answer from a cleanup to a clean operating system reinstall. A machine with system files damaged past repair keeps generating errors long after the infection is gone, and that case is the clearest. More than one infection layered on top of each other is the second, and each one leaves its own hooks behind. The third is a machine that was already slow before any of this started, and a fresh install clears the infection and the years of clutter in one visit.
A restore is $100 on a computer and $50 on a phone or tablet. Your data is copied off before anything is wiped, the drive is checked while it is empty, drivers and updates go back on, and your files are returned where you expect to find them. The operating system restore page sets out that order, and we go through what is on the machine with you before the wipe.
Slow machine or infection
Both feel identical from the chair and they are not the same job. Plain slowness has a long slope: it has been getting worse for a year, the fans roar under load, the drive is almost full, a dozen programs launch at sign-in, and nobody has opened the case since it was bought. An infection has a date attached. Something changed in a week, and you can usually name the download or the email.
Where the answer is age and dust, a laptop deep clean is $75 and covers a strip, a heatsink clean, fresh thermal paste and the startup clutter. The computer deep clean page sets that out. Where it is not clear, general diagnostics are free and that visit decides which of the 3 jobs you are actually buying.
Before the machine comes in
A laptop needs its own charger on the bench until the adapter is ruled out. Bring the power adapter. Write down the week the trouble started and anything installed near it, and stop signing into banking from the machine until it has been cleared. Send the make, the model and the symptom through the quote form first and the figure is agreed before the drive. Customers coming from Tulsa reach the counter on Highway 51 in about 15 to 25 minutes.
