If you use the internet on a regular basis then you should be aware of some of the harmful things out there that can harm your computer. There are many different harmful things like malware and spyware but for the purposes of this article were going to discuss viruses and how you should protect yourself against them. A virus is basically a malicious piece of software that has been created with the sole intention of harming a computer.

These pieces of software usually find their way onto your computer by just pretending to be another piece of software so that you will download it and install it. Once they are on your computer they will do their evil tasks and they will also run in the background. Both of these are one of the biggest causes of a slow computer. When these programs are running in the background of your computer they are using up your computers resources (like CPU usage and memory) and this leaves less computing power for you to use.

So, what's the best way to stop a virus? Well the obvious answer to this would be to simply not go on the internet - but as we all that just isn't possible. The alternative is to use an anti-virus program but this also opens another can of worms - which anti-virus programs out there will actually protect your computer without wasting money and not slowing down your computer? Luckily for you, I have used many different anti-virus programs over the course of a few years and I have my top two to recommend to you so you don't have to waste your time or money (like I did) to figure them out.

The first is called AVG Anti-Virus (just do a Google search for it). There is a free version and a paid version. Don't worry if you don't have the money for the paid one, I have used the free one for a few years now and it works just fine. The paid version of this software just has a few more features on it. When you do decided to use AVG, you are going to need to tune it to make your computer faster. There are many ways to configure AVG to do this, but we are going to focus on just one in this article, preventing AVG from performing a scan as soon as you turn on your computer. This obviously means that you are going to have to manually tell it to perform scan when it is convenient for you. Just click on "Computer Scanner", select "Manage Scheduled Scans", select "Edit Scan Schedule" and uncheck the box that says "Enable this task". Now just click on save.

The other piece of anti-virus software that I will recommend to you is called ESET Nod 32 Anti-Virus. Sadly there is only a paid version of this program but you do get a lot of protection, it is not annoying to use and you do not have to configure it at all. This is probably the best anti-virus that I have ever use and you should get it for yourself.