Freeze, and Msg.: "This computer May Self Destruct" ? (HP Desktop)

Robert11 · 12 May 2018

Hello,

First, a most sincere thanks for all the comments and suggestions.
Really nice of everyone to take the time.

pc "seems" to be fine now. He did the MalWareBytes and AVG/AVS scans.
Best thing to just wait and see what, if anything happens with it in the immediate future
or go ahead with the complete re-install now ?

a. Do you think it is (probably) safe for him to change his present passwords to do on line banking, etc.
from this pc, or would it be better to do (only) in person at the individual banks ?

Are their virus' that might (still) send back password info. in the future ?
I haven't read about any like this, but...?

b. If he has to do a complete re-install, how does one go about doing it from the "Image", as was
suggested. Neither of us are very sharp with this, so specific step by steps would be most appreciated.

Or, is a re-install done in some other way; from the original W7 disk, or,...?

Or, just buy a new Windows disk fromMS ? (price is a ugh !). If so, guess it would have to
be a W10 disk, or are W7 still available ?

Much thanks, and best regards,
Bob

Paul Black · 12 May 2018

Hi Robert11,

Robert11 said:

First, a most sincere thanks for all the comments and suggestions.
Really nice of everyone to take the time.

You're welcome!

Robert11 said:

PC "seems" to be fine now. He did the MalWareBytes and AVG/AVS scans.

Did either of them report anything?

Robert11 said:

Best thing to just wait and see what, if anything happens with it in the immediate future or go ahead with the complete re-install now?

Read what I have written further down this post.

Robert11 said:

a. Do you think it is (probably) safe for him to change his present passwords to do on line banking, etc. from this pc, or would it be better to do (only) in person at the individual banks?

If he has access to another computer I would certainly change them on there rather than the current one. Then he could just login with the new username/password (if he changed either or both of them) on the current computer.

Robert11 said:

b. If he has to do a complete re-install, how does one go about doing it from the Image, as was suggested. Neither of us are very sharp with this, so specific step by steps would be most appreciated. Or, is a re-install done in some other way; from the original W7 disk, or,...?

If he has the original disk and he decides to go down this route then that would be best. If he doesn't have the original disk then follow these instructions for downloading the latest Windows 7 ISO.

You can download the ISO file from here:

TechBench

Then use the following information:

Windows (Final) > Windows 7 SP1 (build 7601) > Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 > English > Win_Ult_SP1_English_x64.iso

Obviously change the language and bit type (32-bit or 64-bit) to suit.

Once you have extracted the contents of the ISO and found the ei.cfg file in ISO > Sources > ei.cfg you can either delete or rename it. Doing this will make all Windows 7 versions available on the reinstall. You then just need to burn it to a DVD or USB and use that to reinstall.

On the installation you can select whatever version of Windows 7 you have the Product Key for.
You will only be able to activate the version of Windows that you have a valid Product Key for.

IMPORTANT: Make sure that he backups ALL of his data onto an external hard drive or USB because when you reinstall Windows everything on the hard drive will get wiped/deleted.

Here is an excellent tutorial published by Brink.

Clean Install Windows 7

I hope this helps!

Barman58 · 12 May 2018

I would personally go the safer route where possible in cases like this, where resetting of banking passwords is a good idea .. get the bank(s) involved, ask for assistance, as if they help, and something does happen down the line, they are more likely to pay compensation

Alejandro85 · 12 May 2018

Robert11 said:

pc "seems" to be fine now. He did the MalWareBytes and AVG/AVS scans.
Best thing to just wait and see what, if anything happens with it in the immediate future
or go ahead with the complete re-install now ?

"Seems" is the key word here, quotes included. That's exaclty the problem with security compromises, once a virus manages to run, you have no idea what it really did and how it could be hiding or whatever, it could do literally anything. Since the computer may be compromised, antiviruses can easily fail (even more) and miss. The computer as a whole can't be considered safe or reliable anymore, so there is no reason to delay, just reformat right now.

Robert11 said:

Do you think it is (probably) safe for him to change his present passwords to do on line banking, etc.
from this pc, or would it be better to do (only) in person at the individual banks ?

Don't use the compromised computer. Since it may still have something bad, any new password can also be compromised in the same way as the former, which defeats the purpose of the password change. Use another, known-safe system or in person or in an ATM or any other means, but not the affected computer.

Robert11 said:

Are their virus' that might (still) send back password info. in the future ?

It could easily happen. Since the computer has run a potentially dangerous program, it may have left something else that's doing bad things, not necesarily with you noticing. Or it might have been nothing and no bad things really happened. Problem is that we don't know what the reality is, so the only safe choice is to assume the worst and treat the computer as badly infected, for which the only solution is a clean install.

Robert11 said:

If he has to do a complete re-install, how does one go about doing it from the "Image", as was
suggested. Neither of us are very sharp with this, so specific step by steps would be most appreciated.

An image is not a clean install. An image is a form of "brute force" pseudo-backup, that copies literally everything from a hard disk. Basically, one takes an image and if something goes wrong, you restore it again, effectively "reverting" all the computer to that point in time. It's out of question if you haven't made it before the incident. More often than not, images aren't really useful to recover from security incidents, as you must make sure that the system was clean when the image was took.

A clean install, in opposition, consist in wiping the whole computer and start over from the default installation of the operating system. Since you start afresh, it leaves the system in its most pristine status, ensuring no infections were left (assuming the installation disk came from a reliable source), but at the price of having to reconfigure everything.