Methods, apparatus, systems and articles of manufacture are disclosed to improve anti-malware scan responsiveness, in response to a performance issue on a user computing device, determine a symptom associated with the performance issue based on a user input from the user computing device, the user input corresponding to highlighting an area of a display associated with the performance issue, a window having been rendered on the display by an operating system of the user computing device, identify a scan parameter for a targeted anti-malware scan based on positive results of malware scans from other user computing devices that experienced the symptom, and transmit the scan parameter to the user computing device to facilitate a targeted anti-malware scan of the user computing device based on the scan parameter.