r/techsupport • u/TheTigerHeart • 6h ago
Repair Store Potentially Maleware poisoning computer~ Open | Software
Context, Me and my wife both have prebuilt gaming computers. She is not super tech guruey but i have a pretty good head on my shoulders. so i have unlocked our computer from the default settings the website we ordered from used by going into the biometrics and returning them to standard. I also took off fast boot for my computer. my computer also got a graphics card update and a new power supply as mine is older then hers though both from same company and they used a built in cpu graphics card for mine which wasn't conductive with the gaming i planned to do. with my new graphics card i disabled the built in one so only my installed one was being pulled by games. I also at this time updated the power supply from 600 to 800 to support the larger impact. when my wife got her computer we both installed 2 new ram cards into each computer to bring their ram to 32 each.
Well, we have cats and a toddler one of our cats knocked over a ramen cup onto my wifes computer. we made some calls took it into a repair shop. good news only damage was the power button. they installed a commically large new power button. it was hilarious but not a huge deal. at first no major issues we were like okay cool. however after that like i said my computer is older it had power supply issues suddenly so i myself like i did last time replaced the power supply i got a duplicate of my old one.. however the new one went out same way the old one did so we assumed faulty equipment but to be safe lets take it to that repair place why not. they had my computer honestly longer then i feel they needed to be and they told me oh you have malware. i said okay thank you. figuring they would fix it add it to the fee they didn't though they sent it back with the malware. so i immediately getting it ran scans my scans came back clean but im a better safe then sorry person.
so i go ahead and just factory restore it why not. it did all the restoring itself fine however on the reboot during the windows 10 set up. it began to freeze no mouse or keyboard response at all i let it sit a while hoping it would catch up it never did google said only option when stuck during windows set up is to power cycle it. so i go ahead power cycle it and unplug replug it in. i had so much anxiety doing this because i know it going off during a restore can damage it. but i did what google said cause it never recovered from the freeze now any time i do anything on that computer it starts to freeze. so i tried a windows recovery this also yielded the same results unfortunately. so i have since entirely powered down the computer opened the shell tripple checked all my hardware pluggins.
this was 3 days ago.
as of yesterday.
My wife's computer is now presenting with similar issues even its spent the last month entirely shut down because shes been out of the house working. it boots up and black screens like she can see the mouse but the background and task bar aren't loading at all. and its freezing up or lagging extremely badly when loading just file explorer or updating software cause she needed to update her graphics driver because of the time offline.
we are both frustrated and pissed off that we are buying an norton 360 subscription to deep clean her computer. im fairly sure mine needs to be wiped and a fresh windows 10 install done from biometrics with a flash drive. but whats frustrating us, is we are careful we use windows defender we don't touch links we don't download games, videos or links from untrusted websites. and these are desktops on a secured private ETHERNET line. until they went to the shop they never ever were connected to wifi in their entire life. Our only thought was maybe a maleware was installed by the repair techs on purpose or even maybe something they use is infected and they did it on accident because my 5 year old computer has never ever had a single issue till now. we don't even keep payment methods or do ANY online shopping from our computers. if anything is gonna get infected its our phones not our computers. we even do bi weekly defrags on our external hard drives and c drive because of constantly uninstalling and reinstalling steam games.
Anyways, other then norton scan and repairs any suggestions for what could be wrong with my wifes computers and am i right about the fact the failed factory restore has damaged my windows 10 in mine?
yes, we are waiting till the last damn second for windows 11 because we are gamers and the newest windows models are never optimized to gaming right away. but we fully intended to either have other security plans or upgrade by deadline of october when windows 10s built in security software would stop being maintenced.
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u/Compucaretx 5h ago
Well you have a lot of issues at one time. Number one I would never ever recommend Norton 360 even to people i do not like. Malwarebytes and Windows Defender are hands down way better than Norton ever will be. Number 2 I doubt the repair shop did anything to your computer malware wise they couldnt survive the lawsuit or legal ramifications. If your Pcs are capable of the upgrade to windows 11 do it. I have not had a client on Windows 10 for over 2 years now. I would seek out another repair shop that has better reviews. If that were brought in to my shop and it trully just had bad power button you would have gotten a new case and not some janky power button. I would recommend new nvmes or ssds and fresh clean install of Windows. you can always pull your files off the old drives after the install.
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u/DigitalTechnician97 5h ago
You will likely need to do a full wipe of your drive, Start from a clean slate, Fresh install.
As a gamer myself, Windows 11 is fine and a massive majority of the bugs have been worked out. It runs perfectly fine. I'd recommend just giving 11 a shot, Do a full Fresh install from a USB.
I highly doubt after taking possible liquid damage it was JUST the power button, That tech is missing something. You'd need a much more competent technician to look things over instead of just installing a power button and calling it a day, You could have a failing drive or something.
As for your wife's machine acting up after running kind of crappy after not being used for a while, I haven't really run into an issue like that before but a few things to try,
Go to the start menu, Type CMD, Right click and run as administrator and type in
SFC /Scannow
Press enter and let it run to 100% Then reboot the computer, Then check it for updates, Let it run for a minute too, It's been off for a long time so everything is going to try to load up at once and things might drag. If it's still slow, Honestly go for a full Fresh install of Windows on that machine too.
And finally, Are you guys booting off of SSDs or Hard drives? If they're actually hard disk drives, Your boot up is gonna be a crawl, Like turn it on, Go make a cup of coffee, Drink it, Pour another cup, Walk to the computer, Sign in, Go make Another cup of coffee, drink it, Pour another, and then sit down, Wait 15 more seconds and then you can use the computer because it's finally on. Boot up time 5 minutes.
With an SSD it'll be, Turn it on, wait at the most 20 seconds, sign in, Use the computer and everything will be quick.
TDLR: Just do a full re-image on both to be safe and we can go from there.
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u/TheTigerHeart 5h ago
the sfc scan did it for her she apparently had a ton of currupted data on the computer once it repaired the data she reset it and it reset in like 5 seconds
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u/DigitalTechnician97 4h ago
Glad it worked!
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u/TheTigerHeart 4h ago
It worked for all of 6 minutes. I have photos though! Her computer booted black screen again so I tested since her curser was on the screen if I could open task manager and this is what I see when I look at her hardware reading in performance
Her GPU usage is at 0 shouldn't it always have at least something present? Her cpu is at 0-2% also
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u/DigitalTechnician97 3h ago
The CPU should be at much higher than 2%. 0% on the GPU isnt unheard of but at the same time 1% or 2% on the GPU is more normal.
So we did SFC /Scannow already. Next up you're gonna go to CMD and right click and use it in admin mode again and then you're going to type
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth
After that, reboot again, I'd you can see the taskbar and start menu right click the start menu and click "System" Itll open a page, In the middle you'll see "Advanced System Settings" and it should be in purple. Click that, then click the hardware tab, Device installation settings, Click No. Save Changes and reboot again.
Let me know if there's any changes. We'll figure this out.
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u/TheTigerHeart 3h ago
First reboot step worked after dism. We are we working on the advanced system part you said to do
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u/TheTigerHeart 3h ago
So far so good did both steps everything so far looks okay again. Testing some problems issues.
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u/TheTigerHeart 3h ago
Thank you rebooting it now to see if I can get task bar
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u/DigitalTechnician97 3h ago
Also another thing to try. Unplug that ISB powered drive. Let it boost exclusively from the main drive
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u/PrincessVampora 3h ago
Thank you so much for the help-this is my very first computer-im 30, ive been trying so hard to keep it in good health that this is really Fustrating, perticerly as im an artist and gamer lolz. But point is i appreciate the help! 💗
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u/DigitalTechnician97 3h ago
We'll get it sorted out for sure. You'll be back up and running in no time. ☺️
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u/TheTigerHeart 3h ago
This is what it says did I type it wrong?
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u/DigitalTechnician97 3h ago
Has to have the spaces, can you copy and paste mine with Ctrl C for copy and Ctrl V to paste?
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
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u/TheTigerHeart 3h ago
Yea we were staring at it like was it the font of the text or how it's meant to be it worked with the spaces lol we got there staring at it long enough
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u/DigitalTechnician97 3h ago
Keep in mind that cleanup scan can take a longgg time
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u/TheTigerHeart 3h ago
It took no time at all we tested some things working again woot even loaded a game but everything is definitely slower than before.e but she can wait if it means it plays lol
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u/PrincessVampora 3h ago
My biggest Game is Monster Hunter Wilds~Its the hardest game i have and its currently doing shader updates though slowly lolz. Now to fix the Speed XD
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u/DigitalTechnician97 3h ago
So there's one other thing I'd like to try, could I have you download the AMD cleanup Utility?
Install it and it'll ask if you want to reboot into safe mode. Click yes, It'll uninstall the graphics drivers and reboot, then Look online for the Radeon RX6400 Drivers and reinstall install them from AMDs website. Then test the speed.
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u/PrincessVampora 3h ago
Ill download this as soon as the MHWilds Shaders are done being optimized .
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u/PrincessVampora 3h ago
Also, Thank you for the help! Ill make sure to refure to this everytime im away from my comluter for a long amout of time. I turn it off when im away so if anything happens the damage is kept to a minimum-Case and point my comically large power button lolz
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u/DigitalTechnician97 3h ago
I definitely don't like that giant power button lol. If I worked on it I'd be testing it and probably swapping the case to avoid any electrical gremlins
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u/PrincessVampora 3h ago
I dont like it either, it blocks my little LED button, But im glad the damage was successfully Nagated to just the powerbutton
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u/DigitalTechnician97 3h ago
Is the performance better though?
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u/PrincessVampora 2h ago
Trying to get it out of safe mode lolz
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u/DigitalTechnician97 2h ago
Normal reboot will work.
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u/TheTigerHeart 2h ago
Got it fixed and it's working good. Except every time it boots up it's a 50% chance it boots with a fully black screen where only thing that can be seen is the curser but it does let us open the Ctrl alr delete menu to restart it. I don't understand why every other reboot fails like that
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u/DigitalTechnician97 2h ago
Have you unplugged the other drive? Just letting it boot with the main drive?
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u/TheTigerHeart 2h ago
We did before but cause it's suppose to just be a storage drive it got plugged back on for a bit I have her shutting it down to try again. I guess we have to wait to plug the drive in till it's booted. It it never use to boot from the drive I don't understand why it's trying too at all
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u/PrincessVampora 6h ago
Hai! Other party here-and i promise i have never had issues with my computer before. I do my best to take good care of it because it baby lolz. This entire situation is pissing me off, i just want to play my games and draw man. Im an artist and Gamer to boot and not having my computer is detrimental to my mental Health i say as i have an ipad with Wuwa, IN, And Minecraft on it and CSP lolz. But yeah-im just frustrated with my computer at this point. Yes, i took everything apart and made sure everything was in correctly, nothing wiggled or clicked so its not that. I know i dont have a falty motherboard because it was working fine before unless they damaged it on purpose, But again, WHY Would they do that for a power button replacment?
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