Another very common misconception. Many people don’t know that these are two completely different things.
You should take painkillers (I prefer Ibuprofen, unless you have stomach ulcers) for any type of pain or fever. They reduce inflammation (swelling, redness), thereby reducing pain and control the temperature, which could be caused by virus, bacteria or trauma etc.
Antibiotics, on the other hand,are given to fight bacteria in a bacterial infection (most infections are viral though) They work in a totally different mechanism to painkillers and do not help in reducing pain or fever. Eventually they kill the bacteria, if that is responsible for the pain and fever. They may take take 24-48 hrs to ‘kick in’ and have some effect.
Paracetamol and ibuprofen also work in different ways and are handled by liver and kidney respectively, so can be taken together without any problem (provided your liver and kidney are OK 🙂