No matter how careful you are, your laptop or PC can become infected with a virus. Signs of infection include the machine running slowly, displaying messages or applications you have never seen before, and other generally strange behavior.

If you suspect that your laptop has been infected with a virus, you need to act quickly.

In fact, the more you use a virus-infected laptop, the more damage it can do. The virus can gain access to more personal information, the computer can become even more infected (making it more difficult to get rid of the virus), and the virus can spread to contacts through e-mail and other messages.

If the worst should happen and you discover that your laptop is infected with a virus, do not panic and follow these steps to ensure that your device is fully protected.

This may seem like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but if your laptop has picked up a virus, there is a good chance that you do not have an antivirus program installed or that what is installed is not very good.

However, while antivirus programs are the best (and most effective form of defense) at preventing infection, they can be a real lifesaver if you do get infected.

Bitdefender Total Security is a great choice, offering advanced protection for up to five devices and scoring higher than its competitors in independent AV tests.

Thanks to its advanced threat protection, Bitdefender Total Security is able to identify and remove suspicious viruses based on suspicious behavior.

Unfortunately, new viruses are being created and spread all the time. This means that Bitdefender Total Security includes up-to-date protection against new threats.

With Bitdefender Total Security's complete real-time data protection, you can be sure that you are protected against the latest threats, and with automatic updates you do not have to worry about manual updates.

Once your antivirus software is installed and updated, run a full system scan. This allows the software to check all files and folders on your laptop so viruses cannot hide anywhere.

Some antivirus software allows you to choose the level of scan to perform. A "quick" scan takes only a few minutes and is suitable if you want to run regular scans from time to time to make sure your computer is not infected.

However, if you suspect that your laptop is infected with a virus, a "full" scan is recommended. These scans carefully check every file on your computer, even hidden files, and are especially helpful in catching viruses that are skilled at burrowing deep into your system.

Because these scans are so thorough, they can take a long time to complete and the machine should not be used until they are done. It may be frustrating, but it is worth doing properly to ensure that all traces of the virus are found.

Thanks to proprietary Bitdefender Photon technology, Bitdefender Total Security adapts to the hardware and performs as quickly as possible with minimal impact on the laptop's performance.

If the suspicion is correct, the scan may identify malicious files that need to be removed from the PC. A list of detected files is displayed, which is worth reading to make sure there are no "false positives"-normal files or applications that are erroneously identified as viruses. While this is rare, we do not want to risk deleting important files that are not infected.

To avoid this, many antivirus programs, including Bitdefender Total Security, have a "quarantine" feature. This deletes the file and places it in a safe place where it will not harm your PC. This is effectively the same as deleting the file, but if your PC malfunctions or makes an error while the file is in quarantine, the file can be easily recovered.

If the laptop operates normally while the file is quarantined and the virus is removed, the file will be deleted after a certain amount of time.

Some particularly malicious viruses can infiltrate a machine to the point that it is loaded when Windows 11 starts up or even before. Removing such viruses can be very difficult. So, after performing the first four steps, we want you to reboot the laptop into recovery mode. This will allow the virus scan to run before the operating system loads, which is a great way to catch viruses that load when the laptop starts up.

Most decent antivirus software has a recovery mode, but not all; Bitdefender Total Security is one of them - known as Rescue Environment, it allows you to safely It allows you to launch into a special application that will safely scan your computer and remove any pesky viruses before Windows loads, giving you complete peace of mind. It's worth running a final scan using Rescue Environment to be absolutely sure that your laptop is free from viruses.