sick, or hacked?

XWrench3

Daemon Poster
Messages
818
Location
W. MICHIGAN
well, my ailing laptop with intermittent connection problems went from bad to worse. i can no longer even log on to it. it still shows in my name, but none of the log in passwords i have ever had, work. at the same time frame, my bank account got hacked into. they got us for $300.00! so i don't know if someone hacked my computer, or how they got my debit card information, or if the two are related or not. in any case, i have no idea what to do with my laptop. the last time i had a computer that i was completely locked out of, they still issued complete system restore dvd;s with every computer. i did try safe mode restore keeping my files. but i still can not get in.
 
Do you have anything important on it? If not - just wipe it and reinstall Windows.

If Windows 10 is on it, you can do that from within Settings -> Updates & Security -> Recovery -> "Get Started" under "Reset this PC"
 
it was originally a windows 8.1 machine, that got the free upgrade to 10. will i still be able to keep windows 10, or will i have to revert back to 8.1 or even 7?
 
i had no idea there was such a thing as a firewall device. thank you for the education. they do look like they are geared towards businesses mostly. so the big question about these is, is it like most things? the more you pay the better it is? or will a lower priced small business type (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...m_re=firewall_hardware-_-33-150-130-_-Product) of device work for our 6 home computers? one thing i know, is no matter what, i will NOT be buying this one!!!
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...=firewall_hardware-_-22Z-000Y-00095-_-Product
if i had to have this one, i would just sell off all the computer stuff and forget it. go back to living in the stone ages.
 
i had no idea there was such a thing as a firewall device. thank you for the education. they do look like they are geared towards businesses mostly. so the big question about these is, is it like most things? the more you pay the better it is? or will a lower priced small business type (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...m_re=firewall_hardware-_-33-150-130-_-Product) of device work for our 6 home computers? one thing i know, is no matter what, i will NOT be buying this one!!!
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...=firewall_hardware-_-22Z-000Y-00095-_-Product
if i had to have this one, i would just sell off all the computer stuff and forget it. go back to living in the stone ages.

The reason why that one is so expensive is because it comes with premium support for 3 years. Often, premium support involves SLAs and all that fun ****, which cost some MAJOR $$$ per month. (Into the thousands per month). The hardware itself there probably isn't anything *overly* special if I had to guess.
 
so since i can not do ANYTHING with my laptop other than turn it on and off. how do i go about resetting the hard drive? the only way i would know is to remove the hard drive, then format it to wipe all of the data. then install windows 10 from a flash drive, and hope and pray windows recognizes my machine.
 
actually, i have been thinking about this, and that may be the best way to go anyhow. that way i could be certain that there is no other malicious software/malware/spyware anywhere in the hard drive. if ALL the data is gone, its ALL going to be gone. i will wait for a little while for someone to chime in if this is going to be a MAJOR mistake.
 
Can you not log into the machine at all and access the "Reset this PC" section I mentioned above?
 
Back
Top Bottom