Antivirus software slowing down your whole computer
Your antivirus is running a full system scan in the background, which uses a lot of power and slows everything down. Pause the scan or schedule it to run at night instead. If it's not scanning, antivirus exclusions can speed you up. We'll show you how to exclude folders antivirus doesn't need to check.
Antivirus software has to scan every file on your computer to look for threats, and that work uses a lot of CPU power and hard drive speed. When a scan runs, everything else on your computer feels slow and sluggish. You can pause the scan, let it finish, or move the scan to a time when you're not working. For ongoing slowness, you can exclude folders that don't need protection, which tells antivirus to skip them and frees up your computer.
Fix-IT-Bot will walk you through each step — just tap, no typing needed.
Skip — I just want a technicianCommon mistakes to avoid
- Disabling antivirus completely to speed up the computer. This leaves you unprotected against malware
- Excluding everything from antivirus scanning instead of just backups and archives. This removes protection from important files
- Assuming the slowdown is hardware failure when it's just antivirus running a scan
Signs you need professional help
- After pausing scans and scheduling them overnight, the computer is still very slow Antivirus is causing crashes or freezes, not just slowness You want help choosing exclusion folders that won't reduce your protection
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