My very ugly story about a Lenovo Laptop...

[IntegratedTweak]

If there was one computer that was badly infected as this then you'll be horrified!

It was about 7PM Australian time and I just got this Lenovo Laptop from this guys house in Queensland. The laptop looked like it belonged to a kid before because it looked like someone loves a lot of Anime/Cartoons. As well as a lot of programs and movies, and I know he likes to pirate software, because there was the usual torrent client "Bittorrent" in which I don't like to torrent, because it's illegal. Anyway there were a whole lot of photos, movies and games like LoL (League of Legends) and Popcap Games stuff which I like to play on my laptop myself. After a little while (not long after I had logged on) it started to freeze on me and then it threw a wobbly at me, so I decided to scan the computer with Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware. It would refuse to install the software, because the permissions on the hard drive were denied. I knew straight away that this kid had not been looking after the laptop very well so I went into safe mode and forced the fork down the throat of the laptop (which means force installing the software onto the computer. After I had done that I had restarted back to normal mode and with MBAM installed I was ready to go!

Well about ten minutes later it had found 24 trojans so I just let it sat there for about another ten minutes and it was now sitting on 25 detected objects. After watching RoboCop 3 I went to check on it and it found a whopping 1,547 infections on just that one laptop! Most of them were trojans and worms and there was barely any potentially unwanted programs.

Well I was gaping at the many infections it found. Even SuperAntispyware found about a 100 of them. Most were variants of Conduit.A and OpenCandy, anyway while disgusted I decided to bring out the Windows 7 Starter disk and the DBAN (Darik's Nuke and Boot Disk) one of the weapons that I use to format hard drives so that you cannot recover deleted data after you formatted it, anyway so I'd decide to nuke it and after installing Windows 7 Starter it was restored to fully working condition. I was going to put Windows 8.1 on the machine, but I decided to put it on my new Toshiba Satellite L50D-B.

The infected Count was totaled at 1,647, it took around 5 hours to restore it.

[jwenting]

No doubt the previous owner was convinced that "Microsoft is evil" and therefore refused to install any Windows updates and couldn't find pirated AV software (or more likely his pirated games refused to install with his pirated AV software active so he deleted it).

Have a few acquaintences like that. And they consistently blame the poor performance and constant crashes of their computers on Microsoft rather than on the flood of malware that's residing on their (really theirs? they effectively belong to the people who've hijacked them) computers.

[IntegratedTweak]

I wouldn't say Microsoft is evil, but they do steal your personal info and all that. I wonder if it's the same with Apple.

[jwenting]

"steal"? No. They don't do that.
Of course at times they may need certain information to provide you with specific services.
Same with Apple and Google.

People complain that Windows 10 sends information to the internet if they use Cortana for example. But they never realise that Cortana searches not just their PC but the internet as well.
Same with logging in using a Microsoft account, which is btw. optional. This will synch your various devices you use the account on, which of course requires things like device settings, account information, background images, and things like that being stored on an external server.
If you use OneNote, of course it sends stuff to OneDrive, which is where OneNote by default stores its data, which is what allows you to type a note on your PC and read it back on your tablet or mobile phone.

[IntegratedTweak]

I now understand.

I might be wrong, but do they just collect information just to make their services better? Like surveys from Microsoft they might want to know what your experience is with the products that you use.

[overwraith]

Dude, Bit-torrent isn't illegal. Just use wisely. What you download could be illegal, but lots of sites use it to conserve their server's bandwidth. It could be illegal in your country, but I doubt it.

[Suzie999]

Installing malware detection and/or removal software on an already infected laptop is quite close tp pointless.

I don;t suggest it impossible to restore to working order, just that your time and resources would be better spent moving important data to an external device and cleansing it from a clean computer. Then wiping the infected one, preferably also from another uninfected computer and with a manufacturers low level format tool.

In extreme cases like this, I'd also thougrily inspect the laptops bios.

[Gribouillis]

No doubt the previous owner was convinced that "Microsoft is evil"

He may have downloaded cracked Microsoft programs, and he could not use windows updates because Microsoft would have detected the fraud.

[overwraith]

Suzy's right about malware, you see, it hooks libraries and kernel stuff, so some malware can actually intercept system calls made by AV products if it is programmed to do so. I have heard you can do an AV scan of the drive from another computer somehow by removing the hard drive, but in this case is best to blow the old OS away. Harvest the keys of the previous OS first with a utility if you need to. They call em password/key recovery programs? I think this is possible, or is it only for office products when your box goes missing? IDK.

[IntegratedTweak]

I didn't notice the post suzie made :) Sorry about that.

I am now facing the same fate I always do in my business. Another riddled system and this time the good ole HP brand

[Noor_7]

That sounds story like mine.

I am unsing windows 10 on my lenovo laptop.
I don't have any anti virus. Had one previously but the license has expired then I did not re-install any other one. Because speed of laptop is always same.

I think there can me many viruses inside it. Because I surf internet a lot.
It is becoming a trouble for me to use the laptop as speed is very very low now. When I type something within seconds ...and it appear on monitor after many hours (I mean after sometime), even it takes years to minimize any window or open a new tab.

I have deleted all the temp files. I have stopped giving serviceman my laptop for formatting and even I don't do it myself. Because I have installed windows 10 on laptop but all the hardwares are meant for Vista. I hate Vista. So it takes lot of effort to format my laptop.

I don't know what to do!