Cold vs Flu, Battle of the viruses

Last night was spent disconnected to the internet and sorting out my computer.
You know what it’s like when someone else uses your equipment and something ‘new’ appears? You assume it’s something to do with what they were doing and ignore it, not wanting to say anything because you feel a bit of a jackass.
Hm.
As it turns out, I should have said something, so the joke’s on me.

That pretty little icon was nothing to do with me. Or Hubby for that matter.
In fact, neither of us have any idea how it got there, and for me to actually ‘invite’ it in (ie. install) is something I wouldn’t do without supervision as I’m terrified of doing something wrong.
Yes, I am a technophobe. My PC knows this and plays on my fear, so when anything unusual happens on my screen, I am calling for Hubby’s assistance, guidance and reassurance.

My PC has been running slow for a while, but it would get there in the end.
Hubby had already checked it out and could see no reason for it. However, yesterday I was going absolutely nowhere, and that was before I even tried to log on to the internet.

With a resounding sigh, Hubby stopped what he was doing and had a look.
An in-depth look behind the scenes and whaddayaknow?

I had TWO, (possibly THREE if you included an incomplete upgrade) virus checkers battling for supremacy. And that little icon? That was one of them.
Now Hubs loves FREE software, and we have a brilliant virus checker that is so efficient and sensitive,  it detects a virus before it even tries to so much as sneeze.
Somehow, this uninvited intruder not only invaded my PC, but switched on the automatic upgrades for everything, and auto-installed its own upgrade which didn’t exactly override itself which was already running.
Not only that, but it had duplicated files of practically everything on my hard drive, which took up almost 900 Mb. I don’t really understand Megabytes and Gigabytes (unless it’s something to do with the eating process),  other than the latter is 1000 of the former, but when trying to back up my files to a disc, the memory capacity thereon was insufficient!

More digging around and he found duplicates of the duplicates, so I spent the next 2 hours sorting and deleting, eventually getting my files into proper folders and directories again.
When saving my pictures to a new folder, it duplicated them, so Hubby had to have another look and found something else going on.
Trying to un-install the offending virus checker(s) was another game, and he had to delete all of them before he could begin again.
My machine has been cleaned and defragged and I have an awful lot of ‘grey’ space now.

We have saved the important finance documents to a USB key as well as saving everything to a back up disc as Hubby feels my PC is on its way out.

Logging in this morning was quicker so hopefully I’ll be OK for a while.
Please?