There is a new version of the SMART HDD virus in the wild and it is running rampant. The virus is designed to take over one's window start page; hide nearly every thing on it; and make it appear that one's hard drives hard failing.
The OBVIOUS goal of the software is to make one purchase an illegitimate "fix". There may be more nefarious non obvious aspects to the infection that current Legitimate malware removers may not address. It is unclear how targeted this threat may be.
If you have not yet been hit by this "virus", the wise thing to do is make a restorable system image of your primary drive on a removable drive, AND THEN PHYSICALLY REMOVE that system restoration drive from your computer.
A useful preventative measure may be to create an alternate "user" on one's computer with NO administrative powers and then ONLY use that user account to surf the web until more information and solutions are available. If the alternate user account becomes corrupted, the primary administrative account should still be functional for recovery purposes.
"the wise thing to do is make a restorable system image of your primary drive on a removable drive, AND THEN PHYSICALLY REMOVE that system restoration drive from your computer"
ReplyDeleteOr you use Symantec Ghost, or Acronis True Image.
Either both will do the trick perfectly!
And for both, you don't need a removable drive.