For the past few months, my Windows 11 PC has gradually become slower, hotter, and less stable, with occasional crashes and freezing. The problems seemed to begin after I tried downloading a shader for Minecraft. I deleted the files I could find, and that reduced the crashing, but the system still struggles with demanding games.
A technician recently updated the BIOS and drivers, but that did not completely solve the issue. The PC has roughly 1 TB of free storage and uses a Ryzen 7 7700, Radeon RX 7800 XT with 16 GB of VRAM, and 64 GB of DDR5 RAM. I'm not very experienced with PC troubleshooting, so I'm wondering whether malware is a realistic explanation and what steps I should take to check or fix the problem.
3 Answers
Slower performance, higher temperatures, and crashes don’t automatically point to malware. There are many more ordinary possibilities, such as overheating, a cooling problem, faulty drivers, unstable hardware, or software running in the background. A security scanner can inspect the system, but people online can’t reliably diagnose malware without access to the computer. If you remain seriously concerned, back up important files, perform a clean Windows installation, and change the passwords for your online accounts afterward.
Try running a full scan with a reputable security tool such as the free version of Malwarebytes, along with Windows Security. Also check temperatures and task usage while the computer is idle and while a game is running. That may help distinguish a malware concern from a cooling, driver, or hardware issue.
Since the system has already been having problems for months and the cause isn’t clear, a clean reinstall of Windows may be faster than trying to track down every possible software issue. Make sure important files are backed up first, and don’t restore unknown programs or installers afterward.
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