Everyone hates viruses lol, they can take your personal info as well as your money. So I've written some ways of avoid/detecing/removing viruses.
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- Using Virustotal
Virustotal is a website that will scan your file/link for suspicious and/or malicious downloads.
Pros: Quick, easy to use, free
Cons: Sometimes there are "false positives" (says there is a virus when there isn't)
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- Antivirus
Use a known antivirus (can be free but paid is better). I suggest MalwareBytes, they also have a 14 day free premium trial without credit card
Pros: Easy to download, free (if you don't get paid version)
Cons: Might take a while for the antivirus to detect your viruses and remove them, might not work with advanced viruses
- Windows Defender
You can scan for viruses with windows defender, and you will have the option of removing detected viruses or keeping them (don't know why'd you do that)
Pros: Free, easy to use
Cons: Also might not detect advanced viruses
Agree, sometimes the popular services of online threat checking like virustotal and such provide the false positive results but they are also able to detect various suspects hided from particular standalone antivirus software. However such services diminishes in no way the value of standalone apps. Must have for me, but I would include into my list the solutions from Norton, though it’s a matter of personal bias.