Hi everyone,
I’m trying to figure out whether or not my laptop is now “clean” and could use some advice.
I’m decently careful with security and viruses. I run avast! and Zonealarm, Malwarebytes anti-malware as a backup scanner and use web of trust when online. However something rather disconcerting happened.
Here’s the story:
Last night, my computer started running excruciatingly slow. Opera stalled and crashed. Even my calculator started lagging. With a fresh, three-day-old Windows 7 install and a fairly quick computer, the problems surprised me.
Then I checked my security panel.
Somehow, something had shutdown every piece of security software I had. Avast’s shield, Zonealarm, Windows Firewall – the works. I couldn’t start them up again.
Virus. And I hadn’t gotten so much as a beep.
I shut down and restarted in safemode. I ran full scans with both Avast! and Malwarebytes. Zilch. Neither picked up anything.
Next, I tried to run an Avast! boot scan, but it wouldn’t load. Windows just started normally, and then my computer shutdown as if someone had pulled the plug.
I tried again. Safemode. Bootscan. Restart. This time, the scan did start, but about thirty seconds in, my laptop cut off just as it had before.
Finally, I loaded in repair mode and used system restore. Now, everything seems to work fine. I ran scans after logging in and nothing showed up. It did seem to lag at first, but not like before. I’ve written that off as post-viral paranoia.
So here’s my question:
Should I trust that everything’s fixed? The system restore point couldn’t have been from more than ten minutes before the problems started. Between the restore point and the crash, I didn’t download anything or visit any sketchy websites. I watched Hulu. Also, I did a quick scan and found two newly opened ports: 445 and 25. I’m still a novice and could be wrong, but that seems sketchy.
Is it possible I’m still infected? Given that this bug out-muscled and evaded everything I’ve got before, should I trust the scans now? As mentioned, I just installed Windows, so it wouldn’t be a huge loss to reinstall, just a huge annoyance. Do you think that’s necessary? Any other suggestions?
Sorry about the long post, but I wanted to be thorough. Like I said, I’m still learning this stuff, so I really appreciate your help.
Thanks in advance
Frank