Does my PC have a Virus?

Or is it just playing games with me?

There is usually no simple way to know when you have a virus. I should rephrase this: some viruses exhibit behavior that tell you immediately that they are on your system, but so many viruses mimic other system problems that it is most accurate to say "there is usually no way to rule out a virus as a possible cause of strange software or system behavior on your PC".

Virus writers are usually pranksters whose software is normally designed to avoid detection, and to cause mischief. Both of these mean that viruses are designed to mimic natural processes in your PC so that you don't think you have an infection. They often make your system behave in strange ways, but in strange ways that could also be the result of an application bug, driver glitch, or even a hardware problem. For example, a virus can make strange things print on the screen--but so can a driver problem, or a bad BIOS setting. A virus can make the system spontaneously reboot--but so can a bad power supply, or an operating system problem, or an overheating processor.

Some of the symptoms that could be caused by a virus:

• Spontaneous system reboots
• System crashes/hangs repeaetedly
• Seemingly random glitches on the screen
• Pc slows down, with everything taking its time
• The internet seems very slow and unresponsive?
• Anti Virus doesn't update