My wife's PC got to the point when it booted up, the response for a page to load took forever. It was basically unuseable. I suspected viruses. I googled the best virus software of 2023 and purchased a copy of TotalAV virus scan. It found one virus on her laptop and one one my personal laptop. Her PC was still having major loading issues. I defragged it, that didn't do anything. I also went to Dell Support and uploaded all of her diver updates. Still the same issues.
A week later I had to get my IT person online as I was having issues connecting with our VPN on my company laptop. I asked her what she recommended. She told me to get a Fix Me Stick. Got one cheap on Amazon. This is a Linux based and runs before your PC boots up. Plug it into a USB drive, power up computer pressing F12 rapidly until you get into a safe mode screen, select Fix Me Stick and run it. It will prompt you to connect to the router so it can download any new updates. It utilizes the top virus software scans that are out there. My IT gal said some viruses can hide from traditional virus software when booted up, they can't hide before bootup. I remember TotalAV took roughly 15 to 20 min to run and detect a virus on both mine and my wife's computer. Fix me stick took over five plus hours to run on each of our computers. It found one virus on my computer and eleven on my wife's computer.
It made me restart our computers after it was finished removing the viruses. Each booted up quickly and hers runs like it was new. Problem solved for...for now. I'll run it on hers every few months.
Reviews are mostly positive, some negative. For me it worked like great and saved me a trip to my local computer guy where I'd have spent $100 plus bucks.
New virus scan software
New virus scan software
Distance is not an issue, but the wind can make it interesting!