Antiviruses are essential tools for maintaining system security. There are many options available, both free and paid. However, on some occasions we do not have any installed, either due to lack of disk space if our equipment is old or simply because we do not want it to consume resources. For this reason, in this article we are going to talk about some options to eliminate viruses without having a security program.
Manual virus removal
Keep in mind that what we are going to see is not a substitute for an antivirus and that in many cases it will not be possible. However, for certain security threats, we could use one of these steps that we are going to mention and we will get our system clean.
Use task manager
The first thing is to use the Windows task manager. This feature shows us everything that is running . We will see the different system processes, programs that we have open, etc. But we can also see a virus or any malicious process that may be running.
We have to press the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Delete and go to Task Manager. There, in the Processes tab, we will look for the one that may be problematic and close it. In addition, we can click with the right mouse button and click Go to file location. This way we can remove it.
Directly delete suspicious files
Have you downloaded something recently and that has caused some system error? This is very common when downloading an Internet program or any file when we access pages that are not secure. It is important to know how to identify them in order to delete them before it is too late.
Just go to the download path and delete that file. In case it is a program that we have installed, we would have to go to the Windows Control Panel, Applications and uninstall it there. This may not be enough, but without antivirus you might be able to remove some threats using this method.
Uninstall plugins
Something similar can happen with the add-ons that we install in some programs or the browser itself. If for example you have installed an extension for Chrome and suddenly you see that strange search bars and the like have started to appear, it is very likely that it is that extension.
What we will do in this case is simply uninstall that plugin completely. This must be done in Chrome, Firefox or any program beyond browsers. Hopefully that will just get rid of those bars or pop-ups that have started popping up.
Windows MRT
One more option is to use the Windows MRT function. It is a Microsoft malicious software removal tool. It is capable of detecting and eliminating certain viruses and threats, without actually being an antivirus. We have to go to Start and there write MRT. We run the tool.
We have to give Next and, later, click on Full Analysis . This may take a few minutes, depending on our team. Once this is done, in case it detects threats we can eliminate them from the system.
In short, there are options to remove viruses without antivirus. With this we do not mean that it is a good idea to have the system without protection, but in case of need you can see that there are some alternatives for certain cases. There are important features of the antivirus that we will not be able to supply.
