My brand new build has some kind of malware 🙁 and based on what I've been reading, I think I should do a Diskpart Clean All. I can piece together the procedure for doing that from various posts on various forums, but one point I haven't seen addressed is, what if you have more than one hard drive? Everything I've read just talks about one drive. I have four. My OS and programs are on one SSD; I have another SSD for Lightroom catalogues and Photoshop scratch disk; and I have two mechanical HDDS in a RAID 1 for my data.
My guess is that I should do Clean All to all four, since the virus has most likely spread itself around. I'd be delighted to be convinced otherwise, though, since the mechanical disks are 4TB each, and I've read Clean All takes about an hour to get through 320GB, so we're talking about solid days of cleaning. I have the Windows installation disk, and all my data on backups, so there shouldn't be any problem with that aspect. I've barely used the new system.
'Not sure if it matters, but the system is: i7-4771, Asus Z87 Expert motherboard, 32gig RAM, Windows 7 Pro x64, OEM.
Signs of infection have been 1) hijacked web pages, 2) really intrusive ads with names like DriverUpdate and RegClean Pro, among others, appearing on web pages, and 3) weird names in the list of programs under Add/Remove Programs. Also, not sure if this is related, but maybe worth mentioning: the first day I used the comp, it wasn't on the desk where my modem is, so I connected (successfully) to the internet with the antenna that comes with that motherboard. When I moved the machine closer to the modem I got no internet when I plugged the ethernet cable in, but the antenna still worked. That's when the ads started appearing, as far as I recall. The next day, I had no connection at all.
I ran Malawarebytes and it found more than a hundred offending items, which it "removed", but the ads started appearing again within minutes. Avira found a couple of things, also to no avail, and I ran Kaspersky from a USB key and it reported no problems. I conclude I need stronger medicine. Rather than mess around with half-way measures, I'd like to get this over with. I know reformatting isn't good for SSDs, but it's better than having a virus, right?
Sorry to go on and on. Just trying to anticipate questions people might have. My question to you is: do I need to run Diskpart Clean All on all my hard drives, or just my boot drive?
Thanks!
My guess is that I should do Clean All to all four, since the virus has most likely spread itself around. I'd be delighted to be convinced otherwise, though, since the mechanical disks are 4TB each, and I've read Clean All takes about an hour to get through 320GB, so we're talking about solid days of cleaning. I have the Windows installation disk, and all my data on backups, so there shouldn't be any problem with that aspect. I've barely used the new system.
'Not sure if it matters, but the system is: i7-4771, Asus Z87 Expert motherboard, 32gig RAM, Windows 7 Pro x64, OEM.
Signs of infection have been 1) hijacked web pages, 2) really intrusive ads with names like DriverUpdate and RegClean Pro, among others, appearing on web pages, and 3) weird names in the list of programs under Add/Remove Programs. Also, not sure if this is related, but maybe worth mentioning: the first day I used the comp, it wasn't on the desk where my modem is, so I connected (successfully) to the internet with the antenna that comes with that motherboard. When I moved the machine closer to the modem I got no internet when I plugged the ethernet cable in, but the antenna still worked. That's when the ads started appearing, as far as I recall. The next day, I had no connection at all.
I ran Malawarebytes and it found more than a hundred offending items, which it "removed", but the ads started appearing again within minutes. Avira found a couple of things, also to no avail, and I ran Kaspersky from a USB key and it reported no problems. I conclude I need stronger medicine. Rather than mess around with half-way measures, I'd like to get this over with. I know reformatting isn't good for SSDs, but it's better than having a virus, right?
Sorry to go on and on. Just trying to anticipate questions people might have. My question to you is: do I need to run Diskpart Clean All on all my hard drives, or just my boot drive?
Thanks!
