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Yesterday, I went to my Recycle Bin (for the first time in a while) to purge a bunch of files I had sent there. When I clicked on the folder, my antivirus warned me of a trojan out of the blue. Later, while moving my folder for NetHack to a USB, my antivirus also warned me of a trojan among the files there, which I frankly found odd.1 (I would consider the developers trustworthy, at least, although perhaps the site they host their installation on isn't.)

With this in mind, I ran a full scan of my computer, which came clean, apart from a few web trackers and the two trojans that had come up earlier. These were all deleted. (Being paranoid, I ran a second scan afterwards; the scan indicated that my computer was fine.)

Can I reasonably assume that my computer is fine now? I don't think I have the resources to boot from a back-up, so I rather avoid doing something of the sort unless absolutely necessary.


  1. I'm not sure where these files came from. I try to be careful with my computer usage habits, but I suppose it's possible I got something when I ran into some sketchy sites.
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  • Apologies if this tagging isn't correct. I also tried searching for something but didn't have much luck, but maybe my search terms were wrong. Jan 16, 2016 at 17:02
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    No. For all you can know, the virus could have replaced your AV and display "no result". Jan 16, 2016 at 17:24
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    Apart from that no AV finds all malware, especially not if the malware is new. Jan 16, 2016 at 17:49

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You can't, best option would be to reinstall the os and avoid downloading suspicious files. if you cant do that run a virus scan that doesn't run on the current os such as http://support.kaspersky.com/us/viruses/rescuedisk or something similar. Some virus can and will hide from regular virus scanners or outright prevent them from running. If you use your computer for anything important you need to reinstall the os. You dont want to leave a risk of leaving any malware behind.

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