For the past few months, my Windows 11 PC has gradually become slower, hotter, and less stable, with occasional crashes and freezing. I recently had the drivers and BIOS updated by a technician, but the problems have not completely gone away, and demanding games still perform poorly. The issues seemed to begin around the time I tried downloading a Minecraft shader, so I'm concerned that I may have installed malware. I deleted the files I could find from that incident, which seemed to reduce the crashing and freezing. The computer has roughly 1 TB of free storage, a Ryzen 7 7700 CPU, a Radeon RX 7800 XT with 16 GB of VRAM, and 64 GB of DDR5 RAM. Is malware a likely explanation, and what would be the best way to check or fix the problem?
3 Answers
Before reinstalling, it may be worth checking temperatures and clock speeds while gaming, cleaning dust from the case, and monitoring CPU and GPU usage. A system that becomes hot and unstable under load may have a cooling or hardware problem rather than an infection. Also verify that the game is using the dedicated graphics card and that the graphics drivers installed correctly.
Those symptoms alone do not point specifically to malware. Overheating, background programs, corrupted drivers, failing hardware, dust buildup, or software conflicts can all cause slower performance and crashes. Run a reputable malware scan, such as Malwarebytes, along with Windows Security, but remember that no one can confirm an infection without examining the computer itself.
If the scans find something, follow the cleanup instructions and change important account passwords from a known-clean device. If you still strongly suspect the system is compromised, the most reliable solution is to back up only personal documents, completely wipe the system drive, and perform a clean Windows installation. Make sure your backups are safe before doing that.
That makes sense. I was basing the malware idea on what other people had told me, so I wanted to check whether it was actually a reasonable explanation.