How can you tell your computer is infected by a virus or other malware or spyware? There are over one million computer viruses out there and they all behave differently.

Some computer viruses give obvious signs: they block your computer or make it crash, they create pop-ups, or they delete your files. Others are less detectable, such as the ones that steal your information or track your Internet use.

So here are some hints to help you determine whether you have a computer virus or not:

1) Your computer is very slow. If it takes a long time to load the operating system, or to open a program, or to load an Internet page in the browser, you might have a virus.

2) Do you hear your hard-drive working all the time? A computer hard-drive should make sounds mostly when you open and close programs, and when you start and shut down your computer. If the hard-drive sounds to be working even when you don’t do anything on the computer, you might have a virus.

3) Does your computer crash all the time? If you have lots of crashes, it might b a hardware problem but it might also be a computer virus.

4) Do you get lots of error messages? If you get unexplained error messages when trying to open or close files or programs, you might have a computer virus.

5) Do you have problems connecting devices to your computer, or connecting to the Internet? If all of the sudden you can’t connect external devices such as thumb drives, photo cameras or other USB devices to your computer, you might have a virus. And if you can’t connect to the Internet any longer, you might have a virus.

Keep in mind that new computer viruses are created every day, and even with the latest anti-virus software installed on your computer you might still get infected.