Hey everyone! I'm looking for some guidance. Yesterday, my partner asked me to download an mp3 file on my Acer laptop running Windows 10. While I was browsing for the song, I stumbled upon a site that showed a "not secure" warning in the address bar. I quickly backed out, but I encountered a full-screen ad for an adult site, which freaked me out. I immediately closed Chrome and ran a full Windows scan that lasted 12 hours, but it came back clean. I then cleared my browser history and restarted my laptop, which made a weird noise when the fan kicked on. After restarting, Chrome seemed sluggish. Before clearing my history, I noticed the site listed "DDOS-GUARD" and a couple of other questionable names along with that adult ad. I also scanned with Malwarebytes, but it found nothing either. Now, my laptop has been stuck for over an hour on a screen saying "Preparing to configure Windows, Don't turn off your computer." I'm starting to worry I might have malware, even though I didn't download anything. Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated!
2 Answers
Yesterday was patch Tuesday for Windows, so it’s likely your system is just busy installing updates. If your scans are clear, you probably don’t have malware. Just give it some time to finish updating, and it should be back to normal soon!
If you think there's malware issues, it might be worth checking out a solid malware removal guide. But if your antivirus scans came back clean, your computer might just be having a glitch. Sometimes older hard drives can start acting up, causing slowdowns and weird noises. Just so you know, a 12-hour scan is pretty long, which could indicate hard drive problems. Also, getting stuck on updates can happen too, especially if your Windows is installing patches.
I had similar issues when my hard drive was failing! Make sure to keep backups just in case.
Thanks for the reassurance! I hope that’s all it is!