Here are some simple tasks to run to help maintain your windows machine and keep it virus free. I do this about once or twice a week. Does not take long at all with modern SSD drives.
Simple Windows Maintenance with Power Shell.
In the search bar, type, “powershell” and right click on that and pick, “Run as Administrator”.
Then type or copy and paste this:
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
Let that run, then enter this:
sfc /scannow
Run that till there are no errors reported and then reboot.
Windows Offline Scan
K, I was just describing this to someone and did not realize how deep in menus this setting was, good lord. Anyways, here we go. Follow this freaking click path.
Start menu > Settings > Update and Security > Windows Security > Virus and Threat Protection > Scan Options > Microsoft Defender Offline Scan.
Run that and your computer will reboot into scary mode and hopefully remove any deep buried malware on your system.
So there are three simple steps for a clean running windows system as of January 2023!