Well, this has been a long and hard struggle. I’ve picked up a nasty virus, once that hammers performance, respawns, and redirects all web searches. God knows what else its doing.
The other day, I contacted the highest-rated Orlando tech firm. How that rating (on thumbtacks.com) was determined, I don’t know. The guy said they were experts at virus removal, that they could make it all better, that they would tune everything and my computer would be “like new”. Elated, I gave them my old laptop and left with a glow of hope.
False hope, it would seem. When I collected my computer on Saturday, the guy told me “well, it still runs slow”. I just felt my heart drop out. If crawling performance is a sign of the virus, then resumption of speed should be assumed if the virus was cleared, right? Right? And then, when it finally booted (12 minutes alter) I ran a search on Firefox (the one I’d told him about, for Daytona Beach International Airport Wiki) and there was my hijacked page. All they’d done, I’ll bet, was run a couple of free virus scans through, pulled out the files indicated, and declared my machine clean and the war won. This is after I’d mentioned that Malwarebytes found these things and they returned shortly after removal. So I’m left thinking they never ran a second check. Sloppy, sloppy.
So goodbye $69. And goodbye computer. I’ve got one or two more forlorn hopes (I’m running a Microsoft scan right now). But I figure I’ll be taking this into a shop (one a friend recommended, not one I’d picked online) to reformat it. Sigh. All those little games I’d found, all that tinkering I’d done, all gone.