Can malaware slow your computer down?

Answer 1

The simple answer to this questions is YES. Malware stands for "Malicious Software" and is designed to get into your computer without you knowing about it and perform its malicious actions. A lot of different types of "bad programs" are grouped under the category of malware like Trojan horses, rootkits, worms, spyware etc... Once it is in your computer it will usually do many things but almost always what will happen is that it will create a program that will take up your computers resources which will make it slower. To make matters even worse, some malware programs will actually spawn other programs periodically which will actually take up more of your resources.

This is why it is very important that you keep your computer free from any form of viruses, spyware and malware by having a good anti-virus protection and good malware/spyware protection.

For Anti-Virus I personally use ESET NOD32 AntiVirus, but the only problem with that program is that you have to pay for it. If you want a free one that is pretty good check out AVG Anti-Virus (just do a Google search for them, their website should come up first).

In terms of malware protection I use Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and for spyware protection I use Spyware Blaster. Both of these programs are free and you can find them by simply doing a Google search for them.

So the overall answer is yes, malware can slow down your computer, but there are also a lot of other factors that can slow down your computer. I personally specialize in speeding up slow computers and if you are interested in that topic, then feel free to check out my bio page by clicking on my username - I have a lot of free information on there.