Welcome to Just Ask Matt! Today, Jose writes:

Perhaps this is a fool question: Can you start virus scanning and shut down the monitor? I ask that because when virus-scanning software is running, my PC becomes so sluggish that it is almost unusable. Thank you very much for your help.

Right when you said sluggish, I just had to guess that you must be using either McAfee (Which is a great program) or Norton (used to be great, but leaves a lot to be desired these days).

Now being that I have no idea what sort of hardware you are working with here, I am going to have to do some speculating. Assuming you are not trying to run a computer that is hopelessly outdated, I would say that the best option is to look at either AVG or avast! anti-virus. Both are excellent, but in your case AVG might just be the best choice since it is so light to run on your computer.

In my opinion, there is never a reason outside of troubleshooting a serious problem that you ought to feel obligated to disable a part of your computer’s anti-virus. So I think that moving to AVG is the best option under these circumstances.

Do you have an IT-related question? Perhaps you are just burnt out on writing on the walls with crayons? Whatever the
comments may be, drop me a line, and you too can “Just Ask Matt!”