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Ok so I have a virus. It's a beauty. It has almost my entire laptop, from ~$users and ~$NT.DAT all the way up to ~$recovery and ~$C: in lockdown.. plus has created bogus files EVERYWHERE (hp/HP/Hewlett-Packard, for example) that look all legit and ok until you get 3 folders deep and all there is is an .ini .DAT .log or .exe file that shouldn't exist. It's been an easy and effective way to prevent me from doing recovery, reset, repair, ANYTHING to get rid of it. Yes I'm willing to wipe the whole thing I'd only had the laptop a few weeks, and I got my pics off early. Also I think last night (after two weeks of being careful) in my frustration at its invasion i may have deleted some files actually necessary for the above functions. edit So my question is - is there any obvious solution I may have missed? All antivirus, malware removal etc software I have used has not recognised the problem. I have tried reset, repair, update, registry repair all with the same response - windows "insert fix here" ran into a problem - no changes have been made. Are there any obvious solutions I have missed?

Fkmck
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  • Help with what exactly? –  Jun 24 '17 at 23:52
  • It is unclear what you asking, flagging as should be closed. – acejavelin Jun 24 '17 at 23:58
  • Help to get rid of it. Preferably without destroying my laptop. So my question is, if the virus has my files and drives in 'lock' mode (held open by ~$ prefix) HOW can I repair/restore/refresh my system? – Fkmck Jun 25 '17 at 00:03
  • What you are saying sounds very suspicious: Why would a virus create `~$*` lock files for files that aren't documents for an application that uses `~$*` lock files? – rakslice Jun 25 '17 at 00:14
  • Boot from external media (Windows installation disk for example or Linux Live CD) and see if you can access locked files. Try not to boot into current system anymore as it can cause more damage. –  Jun 25 '17 at 00:21
  • Rakslice I have been asking myself all these questions, in the end I came to peace by thinking what ISNT suspicious about this? – Fkmck Jun 25 '17 at 00:24

1 Answers1

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On an HP system that came with Windows 10, to reinstall Windows 10 from the recovery USB drive you made:

Note: This will delete everything.

  1. Turn off the computer
  2. Plug in the USB recovery drive
  3. Turn the computer on, and press F11 immediately, until the system loads System Recovery
  4. Choose your language
  5. Click Troubleshoot
  6. Click System Recovery

Based on: https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c04641788#AbT1

rakslice
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  • Before that, one could also try to make backup from existing disk (of course if there is enough room in USB or other HDD) with [disk2vhd](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx). –  Jun 25 '17 at 00:30