**Prevention** 

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  You should be running virus protection and regular updates.  Have virus eradication (different than protection) software already installed.  An example is Malwarebyte Anti-Malware.  There are also root-kit specialty virus removal. 

Have backups of you data.  Cycle them so you also have some old(er) backups.  Don't leave your backup device plugged in - if the virus is going to corrupt or lock data then it has access to your backup.  Cloud service for the $5 / month is money well spent.

Use Firewall protection.

**Symptoms** 

Sluggish.  High CPU but no programs admits to using the CPU.  Update on OS and / or virus protection fails.  Virus protection won't start. 

**Removal**

Hopefully you already have removal program(s) installed. 

Don't just Google Virus Removal and download the first you find. Some are just viruses themselves.  There are known names.  And some good free stuff.

Disconnect from the Internet.  A virus will typically disable virus protection so 1 virus can quickly turn into 20.  And it may be scanning to PC to send data to the mother ship.

Run you virus removal program(s).  Sometimes you need to boot in Safe Mode.  By booting in Safe Mode some of the viruses don't load so they are easier to find and delete.  Hopefully that cleans up some stuff.

Connect to the Internet and update the virus program and run them again.  If they say clean you may be good to go.  

The run all your OS updates. 

Some times the virus is gone but it hacked with the registry and thing still don't run right.  There are registry repair tools - typically free from the OS vendor.

**Recovery**  

Run recovery from you recovery partition or original media. 

**Worse Case**

Some viruses require a reformat and re-install.