Oh yeah, I got one of those, where when you click to close the pop up it installs it, but I also got another one that must have been resident for a bit before I knew it was there. It turned off my updates and did some damage. I’m pretty unsaavy, so I can’t explain, but it destroyed my computer. Fortunately it was an older computer and I replaced it with a Mac. I was able to retrieve my data before the thing gave up the ghost.
Not too long ago virus writers were more subtle, they’d drop in things that did little or nothing or worked slowly. Not anymore, now they like to toast your computer in 30 seconds or less. If I was conspiracy minded I’d say it was the AV companies doing it, but I’m not so I won’t.
It is so easy to run a dual boot system Windows on one partition Unix or Linux on another. You can use Linux to surf, Windows for everything else.
Stable? This machine I am posting from has 15 partitions with 15 separate operating systems on it, all running in perfect harmony, why you might ask I search for bugs in new new systems and report them. Fedora, Red Hat, Gentoo, Sltaz, Slax, Slackware, Debian and a few others.
You can read here if you would like some information.