Lost Everything and have to hand in IT coursework tomorrow...HELP

The_Grandmaster

RussJK wrote: »

I know everyone wanted to help given the circumstances, but the conflicting advice from posters who don't usually involve themselves in malware threads only served to stress & paralyse the OP (read page 2 in particular). It was clearly malware related, and could have been fixed in the time it takes to do a Malwarebytes quick scan and run Unhide.

A bit of empathy would have gone a long way. It was a high stress situation for the OP: she had one inconsolable daughter with coursework due the next day and a computer giving scary, fake warnings. She's wasn't confident with computers and didn't want to make anything worse - or be blamed if she did. She needed assurance that nothing had actually been deleted, as well as calm advice from people who knew the actual problem. The worse thing to do in such circumstances is to overwhelm her with possibilities and fear mongering.

With the above in mind, someone thinking of posting should have decided whether their advice helped or hindered, and whether it fit what the poster was capable of. Since you weren't sure what was happening, then it would have been better not to post at all and let closed, debitcard, or stilltheone walk the OP through running Malwarebytes. If you think that's harsh, then so be it. I'm not perfect either, and originally gave a bad link for Malwarebytes.

(Just so you know, Piriform Recuva isn't a backup utility so unfortunately it wouldn't have helped make a copy of her daughter's work. You can read up on what it does here if you'd like to know the circumstances in which it'd be useful.)

If that's aimed at me, I do know recuva only finds deleted documents but as the OP did state files were deleted, I believe it wasn't too bad a thing to try especially as the priority was trying to get the poster's daughter's coursework. Also it might find previous versions which may have been saved and deleted etc which may have been forgotten. Although nothing may have been gained from running recuva, it would certainly have not led to a loss apart from at most (probably less) an hour for the scan.

Secondally, action 2 after recuva was malwarebytes as can be seen in my post for which I had also attached clear instructions.


But more importantly very good news that the coursework returned! Have you got malwarebytes and an antivirus on your computer now?

birkee

closed wrote: »

You've moved or copied all the work onto usb sticks?

The former is not a backup, the latter is. usb sticks are easily lost/corrupted/infected

avg isn't the best free one, avast or avira are better, and most AV's struggle to keep up with these types of infections so any unusual screens again, end internet explorer in task manager, shutdown, restart and do a system restore, then scan with malwarebytes

post a hijackthis log

I think looby is talking 'back-up' as having the particular files accessible from other sources, as opposed to the disc image back-up.
The first step for Newbies, is protecting their productivity.

free4440273

Well done lubes ( lol ! )! great result ! :beer:

LucianH

I'm extremely glad to hear it's turned out OK. I've pointed my duaghters at this thread so it'll re-inforce the message about backing up their important data (since they rarely listen to my advice!).

usignuolo

Just found this thread and I have similar Trojan virus problem, can you tell me name of the repair shop you used as I also live in London. You can PM me if you prefer.

closed

just follow the instructions to remove it, it's cheaper and faster than going to a shop. The instructions are in this thread, and in your previous threads, or can be found by googling