Hello and happy holidays to everyone. I hope each of you have had a joyous holiday so far, filled with food and enjoyment. The last time I fixed up the computers I mentioned I had blown out the graphics card. The new card arrived late last week and I put it in. Also the platter 1tb hard drive I used in that computer was chattering bad. Not a good sign. I planned to change it out with another one soon. Well soon happened Christmas day because I may or may not have had a medium risk virus / malware I couldn’t clear that looking back I was attacking the wrong thing.
I ran Norton Power Eraser first thing on both computers. The Video computer was clean, no problems. The Blogging computer had the medium severity virus / malware saying it was in the GeForce …, which is where I screwed up. Because I tired from being up most of the night due to both steroids and both Ron and James setting the house alarm system off. I miss read where the virus was. It was not in the graphics card driver like I assumed. It was on a file to install the automatic GeForce NVidia graphics card drivers. But the driver install and the program install had very similar names and I did not catch the difference.
When I ran the cleaner program it said it couldn’t remove the malware. I Was surprised as it normally uninstalls the malware easily. I uninstalled the driver manually but the computer kept putting it back in when I tried to run the Power Eraser scan. And every scan was telling me that I still had the virus. After about a couple hours I decided to stop monkeying around and just dump the OS (Windows) and change the secondary drive I was using for the data / programs not need to installed on the OS SSD. I did that. Ron put the computer back on the floor and as I am not supposed to get down on the floor or under desks ROn hooked it back up.
That is when I found out I seriously messed up my windows install USB last time I was doing the install / changing drives. I was having an issue with the 1 TB hard drives and switching data / programs where I wanted them. I was getting write protected errors and blocks. I changed the attributes on the drive and files and forced the changes. It was only after that I suspected I was trying to do it to the Window’s install USB, destroying the ability to use it to install Windows OS. Lucky for me I have several others but they were even older versions and would need even more time consuming updating. I worried it was so old that windows would reject it.
When you install windows if you leave the computer connected to the internet the OS program will go to Window’s servers and install an updated copy of the OS program. That saves a lot of time installing, updating, installing more, updating over and over. I have taken to doing that. Yes it is before the anti-malware anti-virus and firewalls are installed but I find it is an acceptable risk. But right after it stops downloading and get to the region / license stage you must disconnect the internet access or Window’s will force you to use your online Microsoft account or set one up to start the computer. I hate that because it informs Microsoft every time you start your computer, plus it use to require a person to keep putting in their password to start the computer. The first time I did the installation I forgot and locked myself in a loop of Windows refusing to let me go further unless I used the Microsoft account. I had to redo the download and start of the install.
Once I got the OS running I installed Norton and ran the power eraser. Still had the malware. But I had not installed the graphics driver so I looked closely at where the malware location was. Damn it, it was on a thumb drive I was storing some of the programs I wanted to install so I wouldn’t have to look each one up. I deleted the file, and told the NPE to fix the problem, and it did. What a lot of extra work because I did not read / understand what the malware was or where it was located.
Well I got everything done and set up by 10:30 last night and went to bed. Hopefully I can do a bit of computer housekeeping and get to answering comments and do a bit of posting. Best wishes and hugs.
Scottie's Playtime 
I hope you know that for many of us you’re speaking Greek … !!
I still am at a loss why you continue to have so many computer problems. From some of your previous comments, I’m guessing it’s because you sometimes (often?) visit some rather shaky blogs/websites. Perhaps it’s time to rethink your browsing patterns? Might save you some frustrations … AND money since you’ve mentioned you’ve had to replace certain components.
In any event, hope things are now back to normal.
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