What is a Trojan virus? What does the Trojan virus do? If your computer is affected by the Trojan virus, what can you do to remove it? This post from MiniTool will show you the answers and also introduce a piece of software to safeguard your computer.
What Is a Trojan Virus?
A Trojan virus is a type of malware that is often disguised as legitimate software. Trojan virus can be employed by the cyber-thieves and hackers who are trying to access uses’ systems. And users are tricked by some form of social engineering into loading and executing Trojans on their systems. Once activated, the Trojan virus is able to make cyber-criminals to spy on you, steal your data and access your system.
So, if your computer is running more slowly or is being redirected to unwanted sites, advertisements, or a pop-up window is appearing with weird DLL errors, your computer may be infected with a Trojan virus.
This kind of Trojan virus infection requires an action on the part of the users. It can be involved in downloaded free software, downloaded attachments from an email or a file. Trojan viruses can also attach to Windows utilities, free games, and many other types of software.
So, do you know whether your computer is infected with a Trojan virus?
Is Your Computer Infected with a Trojan Virus?
There are several ways a computer can get infected by a virus. So, it is necessary for you to check whether your computer is infected by a Trojan virus. If you notice any of the following issues with your computer, it may be infected by a virus:
- Slow computer performance (Take a long time to startup or open programs).
- Miss files.
- Problems of shutting down or restarting the computer.
- Frequent system crashes or errors occur.
- Unexpected pop-up windows.
- New applications that appear without downloading them.
- Emails that send automatically from your accounts.
- Browser lags or redirects.
- The sound of the computer’s fan seems to be whirling and working hard when you are not doing much.
- Malfunctioning antivirus programs or firewalls.
- There are new icons on your desktop that you do not recognize.
- You are unable to access the Control Panel, Task Manager, Registry Editor or Command Prompt.
How to Perform Trojan Virus Removal?
If your computer is infected by a virus, the most important thing you need to do is to remove the Trojan virus on your computer. Computer viruses are almost always invisible. Without anti-virus protection, you may not know you already have one. So, it is necessary for you to install an antivirus program on your computer. So, in this part, we will show you how to perform Trojan virus removal.
Scan Trojan Virus on Your Computer
Step 1: Install Antivirus Software
In order to remove the Trojan virus on your computer, you need to download and install an antivirus program on your computer. There are a lot of antivirus programs on the market, such as Avira, Avast, etc. If you do not want to install a third-party antivirus program, you can also try Windows built-in tool – Windows Defender.
Step 2.Disconnect from the Internet
When you are trying to remove a virus from your computer, you had better disconnect from the Internet to prevent further damage. Some viruses are spread via the Internet connection.
Step 3: Boot your computer into Safe Mode
In order to perform Trojan virus removal, you need to boot your computer into safe mode.
Now, here is the tutorial.
- Press the Windows key and I key together to open Settings.
- Then go to the Recovery tab and choose click Restart Now under the Advanced startup
- Then go to Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Startup Settings.
- Then click Restart to continue.
- Press F5 to restart the computer in Safe Mode with Networking, but you need to keep your PC disconnected from the network.
Step 4: Delete Any Temporary Files
After entering the Safe Mode, you need to delete any temporary files.
Now, here is the tutorial.
- Type Disk Cleanup in the search box of Windows 10 and choose the best matched one.
- In the pop-up window, choose the drive you want to clean and click OK to continue.
- Then it will begin to scan the hard drive.
- In the pop-up window, select the temporary files and click OK to delete it.
Step 5: Run Virus Scan
Now, it is time to perform the Trojan virus removal. Here, we use Avast as an example. Since your computer is in Safe Mode, you cannot launch Avast as normal though it is still protecting your computer. So, you can take the following steps to run a virus scan.
- Press the Windows key and R key together to open the Run dialog.
- Type cmd in the box and click OK to continue.
- In the Command Prompt interface, type CD followed by the location of your Avast installation files, such as C:\Program Files\Avast Software\Avast. Then click Enter to continue.
- To schedule a boot-time scan for all drives in your PC, type the command sched /A:* and press Enter to continue.
- Then the Command Prompt will confirm the Boot-time scan with the word Scheduled.
- Type shutdown /r and hit Enter to continue.
- Then your computer will begin to restart. The Avast will begin to scan your computer and remove the Trojan virus. In addition, it may cost some time and you need to wait patiently.
After all steps are finished, the Trojan virus removal process would be completed. And please reboot your computer and check whether your computer still encounters the errors.
If the above solution cannot help you to remove the Trojan virus, maybe you need to reinstall the operating system. But before proceeding on, please back up all your important files.
Tips to Prevent Computer from Trojan Virus
To prevent your computer from further attack, only the antivirus software on your computer is not enough. You also need to take some measures to safeguard your PC.
1. Use Strong Passwords
To protect your computer from further attacks, you need to use a strong password. The most commonly used passwords in the cyber world are also the worst. So, you need to create a unique, complex password. In general, it should include a mix of numbers, letters and symbols and are at least 8 characters long. In addition, avoid using the same user name and passwords on multiple sites.
2. Keep Everything up to Date
Another way to keep your computer safe is to make sure that you have updated all software on your computer as well as the operating system to the latest version. Software updates are designed to withstand the latest security threats and fix some bugs. So, it is recommended to keep everything on your computer up to date.
3. Use Antivirus Software
In order to safeguard your computer, you also need to install a piece of antivirus software on it and enable it. Antivirus software is able to identify and eliminate the threat before you were even aware of it.
4. Turn on Windows Defender Firewall
In order to keep your computer safe, you also need to turn on Windows Defender Firewall.
Now, here is the tutorial.
- Open Control Panel.
- Click Windows Defender Firewall.
- Then click Turn Windows Defender Firewall on or off from the left menu.
- Check Turn on Windows Defender Firewall on Private network settings and Public network settings
- At last, click OK to save the changes.
5. Install a Pop-up Blocker
Many attacks happen through browsers since you are going about your daily online routine. Hackers may gain access to your computer from one innocent click on the wrong links. So, in order to protect your computer from the Trojan virus, you can install a pop-up blocker on your PC.
6. Back up the Computer and Files Regularly
When your computer is infected by a Trojan virus, the system will be damaged and your files will be destroyed. In this case, if you have backed up files and the operating system before, things would be easier. You can restore files and restore your computer to a normal state when your computer is infected by a Trojan virus.
So, how can you back up your computer regularly? To do that, you can use the professional PC backup software – MiniTool ShadowMaker. It is designed to back up the files, folders, disks, partitions and the operating system.
Now, we will show you how to back up your computer or files regularly.
1. Download MiniTool ShadowMaker from the following button, install it and launch it.
MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
2. Click Keep Trial.
3. After entering its main interface, go to the Backup MiniTool ShadowMaker selects the operating system as backup source by default. If you want to back up files, click Source module and click Folder and Files to continue.
4. Click Destination module to choose a target disk. It is recommended to save the backups to an external hard drive. Then click OK to continue.
5. After selecting the backup source and destination, you can click the Schedule button to create automatic backup.
6. After that, you can click Back up Now to create a system image.
After all steps are finished, you have successfully backed up the operating system of files. If your computer is infected by the Trojan virus, restore the computer and files with the backup image.
Bottom Line
To sum up, this post has shown what a Trojan virus is, how to check whether your computer is infected by a Trojan virus, how to perform Trojan virus removal and how to prevent the computer from Trojan virus.
If you have any different ideas of Trojan virus and removal Trojan virus, you can share it in the comment zone. If you have any problem with MiniTool ShadowMaker, please feel free to contact us via the email [email protected] and we will reply to you as soon as possible.