Al Lustie's Tips and Tricks

What to do if you have gotten distracted and fallen for a scammer?

1.  Hang up, or in whatever way you must, get rid of the guy.  If he has your email address, use your filter options to send his/her email directly to JUNK or DELETE.  If you have Gmail, Xfinity, MSN, Yahoo, etc -- use the filter on the web site so the email never gets to your personal computer.

  If this scammer phones you, ask for a phone number and then call your local sheriff or police and report the person.  Most law enforcement folks have someone who takes the reports.  If a number of people are getting 'hit', they may try to do something about it.  (Probably not, but it never hurts to make the report.)

2.  If the scam has gotten an email through to your computer, or you have clicked on a button on a scam site, turn your computer OFF.  Just hold down the power button and power down.  When you turn it back on, press the F8 key several times and choose "Safe Mode".

  PREPARE FOR THIS EVENTUALITY:  Purchase Malware-Bytes Anti-malware program and keep it running all the time.  http://www.malwarebytes.org/   It will work with most anti-virus programs.  Oh, yeah.  Keep your anti-virus definitions updated and keep that program running all the time.  Make a careful record on paper of your license keys, passwords, user names, etc.  You will need this information. . .

3.  If you can, do a system restore and go back to the last "good" restore point.  You may not be able to do this, but if you can, then do an in-depth scan using both your antivirus and anti-malware programs.

4.  If you had not gotten malware-bytes anti-malware program, get it (at least the free version) and run it a couple of times.  Ditto, run you antivirus program.  Don't use "Quick Scan" -- do an in depth can for each of these.

5.  If none of these tactics work (and they won't unless you power down very quickly) you will probably need to use a program like "killdisk" and scour your hard disk.  Before you do, back up all your DATA including pictures, bookmarks, contact lists, emails, and downloads if you have not downloaded any "junk", etc., to an external hard disk.

6.  Reinstall windows.  (Mac users usually don't have this problem, but it you do, reinstall OS/X.)

    Reinstall your antivirus program and do an in-depth scan.  Then do a similar scan of the data you saved on the external hard disk.  Delete/clean any errors you find.

    Reinstall Malware-bytes program, and run an in-depth scan of your computer and then your external data.  Clean/delete any errors you find.

7.  Reinstall programs, not including any programs the scammer(s) persuaded you to download.

    Do anti-virus and anti-malware scans again.  Clean/delete any problems found.

8.  Bring your data back.  I recommend scanning again but that may be redundant.

9.  Change passwords, including the password to get logged in to your computer, and if you bank online, ask your bank/credit union to watch for unusual activity in your account.

10. Now, set a restore point.

This takes a lot of time, care and effort.  Prevent, prevent, prevent -- if you can.

Any comments?  Let us know what you are thinking. . .

I got a call from a client yesterday.  Someone from a company claiming to be a Microsoft support company had called (from India) to tell him he had issues with his computer.  Could he have access to his computer to fix it before it got worse.

Can you spell "SCAM"?  There are lots of companies doing this.  My friend started to fall for it, then hung up and called me.  I scrubbed his hard disk, reinstalled Windows and his programs and his data.  Maybe the scoundrel had not put anything [yet] on his computer, but we don't want to take chances.  I also asked him to call his bank and alert them to any possible problems.

BE CAREFUL!

Microsoft has no way of knowing what is going on with your computer unless YOU call them or YOU email them.  Windows does not send them problem reports.

Join me and others and let's, together, not let the bad guys win!  (There are other names for "bad guys" but I'll be decent.)

Leave a comment and let us know what you think.  Oh, if you are a scammer, instead of leaving a comment why don't you either reform or jump off a high building onto a frozen lake surface.

I put a date in the title because this may not be the only IE 10 problem that comes my way.  My client brought the computer over because he had been upgraded to Internet Explorer 10 on his Windows 10 Home Premium computer.  Then it did not work. 

I took a look.  Surprise.  It would not connect to the network, or to the internet.  Not wirelessly.  Not with a CAT5 cable. 

I explored some more.  His network adapter drivers were OK, his hardware showed health.  Still, no network.  We ran his antivirus program.  We rebooted.  No joy.  We could had get System Restore to work.  His recent IE 10 update did not show.

Finally I did the infamous Control+Alt+Delete and selected Task Manager.  I got into the "services" area and discovered that something had turned ALL his network related services OFF.  As I examined the column, I found that most services had been turned off.  But the network was my concern.

I right-clicked each service required for a network connection, selected properties, utilized the drop-down menu and chose "Automatic" and clicked Apply.  After doing this 12-20 times (I wasn't counting) I thought, "Let's reboot and see whether these hold."

After rebooting we did the three-finger salute, selected Task Manager, and looked.  Not only were my changes holding, we could connect to the internet. 

I downloaded the free version of the malware-bytes program and ran it.  It found 19 instances of problems, which I removed. 

We rebooted and, again, could get on the internet.  My client has DVD's made at home, so he decided that rather than have me keep restoring his services one at a time he would re-install Windows.  I haven't heard how that went, but I suspect he's doing fine.

Have you had this problem?  Leave a comment and let us know.