by the stuart » March 1st, 2016, 10:26 pm
capnkrunch, thank you for responding to my request for help.
I am a senior who has not held employment of any sort for a number of years. Please forgive me if I appear a little slow to comprehend some things. I have never been connected to a university network, although I do have a daughter who works part time at a university.
I do not have any threads open on any other forums. I had an active thread on Windows Sevenforum when I thought that I just had a Windows Update issue. However, they felt that I had evidence of malware and were not confident that they could get me functioning. I started a thread at Bleeping Computer, but, due to my ignorance, the title was ineffective and I included inappropriate logs and I had undermined my own efforts. So, I abandoned that thread a few days ago and came to this site for a fresh start. I have read all of the forum rules here before my first post, so I have tried not to include too much information or to break any rules.
I have been fairly disciplined over the years about backing my files up. I have a Western Digital external hard drive connected at all times with a mirror of my files, but I have not been of the belief that it is an image of my C: drive, including the program files. When I bought this desktop, I just connected the WD drive with its included software and have let it do its thing. I have viewed it as insurance against hard drive failure, but I do not know about its susceptibility to the same malware as the C drive. At the time that my problems started to emerge, I started to experience various forms of "permissions" symptoms and "access denied" to my own hardware and software. To top it off, Microsoft offered an update for my WD which only reverted the original software to some generic variety and now I have lost communication with the WD, although I can access its contents via Windows Explorer. But, I have no idea if it is mirroring the C drive anymore.
I have also attempted to backup to two other external hard drives, using two different programs, one being the W7 included backup program. However, due to the ongoing problems, I am never completely sure that a given operation has complete successfully.
As a last resort, I just took a half dozen -r DVD's and did a straight copy of the most important files on the C drive. I have transferred files from probably a couple of earlier computers dating to W98 SE and covering nearly 20 years. I have been using Office 2003, although I know that it is unsupported. I have a lot of old correspondence in MS Outlook that I have kept backed up to a .pst files and stored externally. But, again, I do not know how far I have been compromised. I have always kept Norton products (currently 360) current and active to provide spyware, anti-virus and firewall protection, so I was caught offguard by this apparent incursion. The .pst backup has grown too large for me to drag & drop, so I have been cleaning house and am going to try to drag & drop a .pst to a thumb drive.
Since I have access to other computers in the house, I will probably rely on that means of following your instructions, rather than printing them out. Due to a frightening experience, I have kept the LAN connector unplugged from the troublesome computer most of the time lately.
I am the only user of this computer and possess all of the Administrator's permissions that the apparent intruder has not usurped.
Would you like me to post a link to my original thread on the Windows Sevenforum where I related my experience with this computer and where some unexplained behaviour was documented?
stu