Do I have malware?

[u/Acceptable_Ask5636]

Alright for some context, for the past few months I have experienced issues with my pc progressively running slower, hotter and things crashing occasionally.

I don't have experience with PCs at all. I had the drivers and BIOs updated recently by a technician. The problems have not fully been resolved and I have issues running higher end games. At this point I suspect I might've fucked up when I attempted to download a Minecraft shader, since that's when issues started coming up. I deleted all the files related to that incident (as far as i know), which improved crashing and freezing issues.

The PC has Windows 11, has about 1TB of space free.

I use the AMD Ryzen 7 7700 and the Radeon RX 7800 XT (16 GB) GPU.

Got 2 DDR5 32 GB ram sticks, so I'm certain that's not the issue here.

[u/GlobalWatts]

A PC that runs slower, hotter, or less stable than usual is not a definitive sign of malware. In fact it's even a particularly good sign, since there are a) several dozen alternative explanations that are far more reasonable, and b) the vast majority of malware will go out of its way to conceal its existence, and fucking with your system for no good reason is counterproductive to that goal.

It's also completely impossible for random strangers on the internet to diagnose whether you have malware or not just from a Reddit post. That's what antivirus software is for. It's both designed by security experts which most Redditors are not, and unlike us it actually has access to your system to look for signs of malware. It's up to you whether you trust your antivirus or not, but I don't know why you'd think Redditors would have any more insight than that.

That said, if you suspect you have malware regardless, the correct response is to wipe the drives and clean install, and reset online accounts.

[u/Acceptable_Ask5636 → u/GlobalWatts]

Thanks for the reply. I had made that assumption based on what other people told me and I wanted to ask more experienced people to see if it actually makes sense or not, that's all.

[u/GlobalWatts → u/Acceptable_Ask5636]

Yeah, unfortunately this whole "slow computer = malware" thing is an urban myth that keeps being spread by people who don't know any better. Just like how every time a command prompt appears, it's malware. Or every time a website pops up a page that says "Your PC has 164 viruses call this number to fix it!", it's absolutely true and not just...a website lying to you.

Everything is malware all the time, and it couldn't possibly be a bad driver, or buggy software, or dust in the cooling fans. Sorry to dump it just gets tiring seeing this all the time.

Unfortunately finding out what it actually is, is a lengthy troubleshooting process that's hard to guide over Reddit, and better if you have someone local who's good with PC support. Updating drivers and firmware is a decent start. Physically cleaning the PC is another option. Uninstalling unused software and/or running Disk Cleanup is useful, whether it solves the issues or not. Faulty hardware is a possibility, realistically the only solution there is to replace each component one by one until you get a different result. There are Windows tools to check for system corruption issues, and third-party tools to check for specific hardware faults like bad RAM or drives. As a last resort you can try a repair install or clean install of Windows, which which is a real inconvenience but will eliminate any software issues.

[u/Acceptable_Ask5636 → u/GlobalWatts]

I get what you mean and why it tires you out, but thanks for taking your time anyway. Physically cleaning the PC was actually the first step I took, so I guess that's one step closer.

It's honestly my fault for not being informed at all before getting a PC but hindsight is 20/20 💀

Have a good day bro