My recommendation: Burn it to the ground, and reinstall. It's sounding like quite a lot is compromised.
More detailed recommendation: - Buy a new hard drive. - Remove the old drive, install the new drive, do a clean OS-install on the new drive. - Fully patch the new OS install. Install virus checker(s) of your choice. - Add the old drive as a secondary drive. Make sure you're not booting from it. - Boot from the new drive, run a virus scan/clean on the old drive. - Copy any data files you care about from the old drive. Make sure they're clean; Word documents and a few other things that shouldn't have executable code in a sane world, can contain executable code. - Reformat the old drive, and keep it for data storage.
Good luck. This is going to be painful no matter which way you choose to fix it.
Unless you know of an easy way for me to take out and mount my old laptop's hardrive to this desktop, I do not have the $$ to do as you suggest. I am looking for a more conservational and sergical move.
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More detailed recommendation:
- Buy a new hard drive.
- Remove the old drive, install the new drive, do a clean OS-install on the new drive.
- Fully patch the new OS install. Install virus checker(s) of your choice.
- Add the old drive as a secondary drive. Make sure you're not booting from it.
- Boot from the new drive, run a virus scan/clean on the old drive.
- Copy any data files you care about from the old drive. Make sure they're clean; Word documents and a few other things that shouldn't have executable code in a sane world, can contain executable code.
- Reformat the old drive, and keep it for data storage.
Good luck. This is going to be painful no matter which way you choose to fix it.
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I am looking for a more conservational and sergical move.
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