You might be wondering if your computer has a virus because you’ve seen a strange process in the Windows Task Manager, which you can open by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc or by right-clicking the Windows taskbar and selecting “Task Manager.”
It’s normal to see quite a few processes here — click “More Details” if you see a smaller list. Many of these processes have strange, confusing names. That’s normal. Windows includes quite a few background processes, your PC manufacturer added some, and applications you install often add them.
Badly behaved malware will often use a large amount of CPU, memory, or disk resources and may stand out here. If you’re curious about whether a specific program is malicious, right-click it in the Task Manager and select “Search Online” to find more information.
If information about malware appears when you search the process, that’s a sign you likely have malware. However, don’t assume that your computer is virus-free just because a process looks legitimate. A process could lie and say it’s “Google Chrome” or “chrome.exe,” but it may just be malware impersonating Google Chrome that’s located in a different folder on your system. If you’re concerned you might have malware, we recommend performing an anti-malware scan.
