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JUST GOT A NOTICE THAT MY HARD DRIVE WILL BE WIPED IN 4 MINUTES!!!


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Were you online when you got the notice? If so, it may not be real... there's a lot of spoof pages out there that try to get you to believe that unless you call them, something bad will happen. Hopefully that's all it was, and your computer itself is not infected with ramsonware.

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Most ramsonware doesn't immediately threaten to wipe your HDD - it "locks" it so you can't access it, and gives you instructions on how to unlock it.

 

It may threaten to wipe it, but that typically only comes later...

 

DON'T call whatever number you saw!!!

 

Immediately shut down your computer and reboot. Do not go back to whatever web page you were visiting!

 

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I'm disinfecting from the Linux side of my computer. The virus is on the Windows side.....and I wiped out my browser history so I don't go back there again !

 

Yup - avoid that site from now on!

 

Did you get everything cleared up? Was it just a fake ransomware message without the actual infection?

 

 

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I hope you get your HD back. I would not even click the X in the dialog box close the browser via ctrl+alt+del and then reboot the computer.

 

Preventive:

 

Get an external hard drive or one of those internal hard drive docking stations. Make a disk image back-up every day on one drive, and once a month, make another image on a second drive. If you get ransomware or any other kind of difficult to remove virus, you can restore the image you made a couple of days ago, if not, use last month's image.

 

It's not foolproof, but it's the best defense after AV and anti-Malware apps.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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I clone my drives every two weeks. Just rotate the drives keeping one set at home in a locked file cabinet and the other in a safe deposit box at one of my banks.

 

That covers everything other than possibly being set back two weeks if worst comes to worst.

 

If you buy western digital drives for the clones, you get free clone software that works great. You can pop the clone in to your computer and you don't see any difference, other than some software asking you to re-register. Gets the operating system perfect. Just snap in and go.

 

Terry D.

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I was probably looking for a hardware driver when I stumbled into the trap.

 

Dan

 

Those "find any driver here" websites are generally crammed with links that look like the link to the driver you want, but are links to all sorts of spammy, crappy, sketchy sites. To find drivers I typically start with Tomshardware and find a thread where I can get a lead on a trustworthy website for a particular driver. Too many knowledgeable and helpful people post on Tomshardware for the bad boys to get much traction there...

 

Hope you got it all sorted out...

 

nat

 

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I picked up a nasty Trojan recently while looking for a patch librarian for my Roland GR33 guitar synth. Instantly trashed my system and replaced the master boot record. Bastards... Luckily I had recently cloned the system drive; it only cost me a day. (2/3 of that day were spent scanning the other drives for viruses.)

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I got an LE disk of Cubase with a guitar fx/amp sim pedal (Digitech RP 355) back in the Windows XP days. BTW, I like the pedal a lot.

 

I've used other sequencing / DAW software before and being curious I thought I'd give this a whirl. I made an image using Norton Ghost (discontinued now, I use Acronis True Image) and installed.

 

The installation stalled in the middle of the routine. I let it sit for an hour or more and when it seemed like there was no chance it was going to finish, tried to quit it (unresponsive) turn off the computer (even Ctrl-Alt-Del was unresponsive) and had to do a forced shut down by holding the on/off switch.

 

On rebooting it wanted to finish the installation, had to shut it down the same way. I even tried the Windows Safe Mode but it was stuck in this loop.

 

Inserted the rescue disk, and restored the previous disk image. Problem solved.

 

Before installing anything new, even an update to an app on my computer, I do at least an incremental backup on my disk image software so if anything goes wrong, I can get back to where I left off. This has saved my butt more than once.

 

Your data is worth a lot more than your computer. And a good disk image can even restore your computer to a date before a malware attack.

 

Don't shut down your computer without it.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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I clone my drives every two weeks. Just rotate the drives keeping one set at home in a locked file cabinet and the other in a safe deposit box at one of my banks.

 

That covers everything other than possibly being set back two weeks if worst comes to worst.

 

If you buy western digital drives for the clones, you get free clone software that works great. You can pop the clone in to your computer and you don't see any difference, other than some software asking you to re-register. Gets the operating system perfect. Just snap in and go.

 

Terry D.

 

This is SOOO important - and the cheapest insurance you can get IMO. If you have uninfected backups you can restore from, you can just wipe the drives and restore from the backups, no matter how nasty the virus, malware or ransomware attack was.

 

Daily backups stored on disconnected drives on-site, plus weekly backups kept off-site will cover your posterior 99.99% of the time - at worst, you're out a week, but usually no more than a day or two.

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Twice in the last few weeks I had a bogus 'you're infected' message served up while I was on the USA Today website (of all things). It locked the browser so I did the three-finger Windows salute, force-closed the browser, ran a malware scan with Malwarebytes. To be extra cautious, I then rebooted and ran another scan. Still nothing.

 

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So' date=' where are you at with this Dan? Was there an actual ransomware infection, or was it just one of those fake notices? Did you get the system cleaned / restored? [/quote']

 

I'm not sure what it was, but it isn't bothering me anymore.

 

Dan

 

 

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