<div dir="auto">You basically have to run live CD version of antivirus software or attach that hard drive to known good Windows PC as secondary and then run anti-virus scan or whatever.<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'm for the fresh install approach. Backup whatever user file is needed with Live Linux CD and go for it. Most laptops got the Windows install partition hidden so is likely not affected by virus.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Nov 8, 2021, 09:35 Allen Beddingfield via Ale <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org">ale@ale.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I've gotten to the point that when I do computer work for people, replacing their hard drive with an SSD is just an automatic thing to do. I find that 90% of people don't have more than about 10GB of data sitting on those slow 500GB and 1TB SATA drives,and I replace them with one of the many cheap $20-25 120GB SSDs available on Amazon. Occasionally someone will have a little more, and a 240Gb or 480/500GB is more appropriate. Even the large ones are cost effective. I've still got people happily using Core 2 Duo systems for basic work, and a LOT of people using really early generation Core i3 systems. The bottleneck is almost always the disk these days, and the cheapest SSD is going to be an improvement.<br>
Allen B.<br>
<br>
--<br>
Allen Beddingfield<br>
Systems Engineer<br>
Office of Information Technology<br>
The University of Alabama<br>
Office 205-348-2251<br>
<a href="mailto:allen@ua.edu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">allen@ua.edu</a><br>
<br>
<br>
________________________________________<br>
From: <a href="mailto:neal@mnopltd.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">neal@mnopltd.com</a> <<a href="mailto:neal@mnopltd.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">neal@mnopltd.com</a>><br>
Sent: Monday, November 8, 2021 8:07 AM<br>
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts<br>
Cc: Allen Beddingfield<br>
Subject: Re: [ale] [EXTERNAL] okay, totally OT - free win 10 virus scan?<br>
<br>
Thanks muchly.<br>
<br>
The bootable Kaspersky found nothing.<br>
<br>
I renamed the folder with the OfficeClickToRun.exe. Still 100% disk<br>
busy. rebooted.<br>
<br>
It ran badly, but barely enough to download/install Malwarebytes and run<br>
that. Which found 42 files apparently related to one malware and<br>
quarantine. Rebooted again.<br>
<br>
Still sluggish, but slightly better. Was able to download/install Avast<br>
and do a deep scan, which took overnight, but found nothing.<br>
<br>
The patient is now booting reasonably ok with low disk usage.<br>
<br>
My working theory is that with only 6GB, the original virus got the disk<br>
so busy that the MS Antimalware scan was never able to complete, and was<br>
always running, making the disk even more busy.<br>
<br>
regards,<br>
<br>
Neal<br>
<br>
On 2021-11-05 12:42, Allen Beddingfield via Ale wrote:<br>
> I've found that the combination of running Malwarebytes first, then<br>
> installing/running the free version of Avast is pretty effective.<br>
><br>
> --<br>
> Allen Beddingfield<br>
> Systems Engineer<br>
> Office of Information Technology<br>
> The University of Alabama<br>
> Office 205-348-2251<br>
> <a href="mailto:allen@ua.edu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">allen@ua.edu</a><br>
><br>
><br>
> ________________________________________<br>
> From: Ale <<a href="mailto:ale-bounces@ale.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">ale-bounces@ale.org</a>> on behalf of Neal Rhodes via Ale<br>
> <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">ale@ale.org</a>><br>
> Sent: Friday, November 5, 2021 12:33 PM<br>
> To: <a href="mailto:ale@ale.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">ale@ale.org</a><br>
> Cc: <a href="mailto:neal@mnopltd.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">neal@mnopltd.com</a><br>
> Subject: [EXTERNAL] [ale] okay, totally OT - free win 10 virus scan?<br>
><br>
> Helping out a friend.<br>
><br>
> Win 10 computer shows signs of virus. 100% disk usage, but Task<br>
> Manager<br>
> shows nothing eating up that much.<br>
><br>
> Resource Monitor shows many copies of OfficeClickToRun.exe.<br>
> googleation<br>
> suggest this be virus. Which appears to make many copies of itself.<br>
><br>
> Thus it would appear that I should find a bootable anti-virus to scan<br>
> this computer.<br>
><br>
> Given I don't want to spend a major portion of my remaining life,<br>
> suggestions? I've used ClamAV in the past. I don't want to make<br>
> things worse by running a virus-scan which is itself a virus.<br>
><br>
> regards,<br>
><br>
> Neal<br>
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</blockquote></div>