Comment on What antivirus software should i use?
catshit_dogfart@lemmy.world 10 months ago
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet - have a good backup solution. If there isn’t anything on your computer that can’t be restored, then you’re not going to feel as much pressure to protect things.
Of course there’s crypto miners, identity theft, botnet stuff, all sorts of things that run undetected and don’t simply render your computer unusable. But if you’re absolutely sure you’re not losing anything, then “nuke it from orbit” becomes a more paletteable solution for virus removal. A hassle for sure, but format and start over again becomes an option that results in no loss other than the pain of having to reinstall everything.
TenorTheHusky@kbin.social 10 months ago
To add to this, if you have the storage then a solution like Macrium Reflect (or a FOSS alternative) is a great option too. I let my PC back itself up every morning before I wake up, then if something happens to it (virus, broken driver, bad install, etc.), I can just revert it to the state it was in earlier that morning using a recovery drive.
Windows Defender has also gotten pretty good over the past couple years - features like controlled folder access will protect sensitive data from ransomware (I just use it on my backup folder). The combination of the two has been plenty for me to deal with viruses or broken programs - I haven't had to run a clean install of Windows in 4 years.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 10 months ago
if you’re doing frequent backups, make very sure to have multiple copies of backups. You get a virus into your backups, that does no good if it’s your only back up.
TenorTheHusky@kbin.social 10 months ago
Good point - I usually keep two weeks of daily backups just in case