NordVPN is one of the most highly recommended providers, and it's also in an area where they are not affiliated with or are required to hand over any data regarding their users regardless of who asks. They also keep no logs, allow torrents, Onion over the VPN (TOR Network), kill switch, and more.
As /u/iamofnohelp said you need to backup that data.
1997 means no SATA (SATA was introduced in 2000), the drives will be the old PATA ribbon type. You also will not have USB (USB 1.1 was introduced in 1998). You can't just plug in a USB card either, most anything you find today will require a PCI-e connection, which also came after your PC. This makes backing up the data a bit of a challenge.
Magnetic media degrades overtime so you may well run into read errors once you access the drives. That also means you want to minimize reads and writes as much as possible until you've backed up your data.
I think your best option is to get a USB adapter that supports PATA, one like this, AGPtek SATA/PATA/IDE Drive to USB 2.0 Adapter, then connect the drive from the old PC to a newer one using that adapter. (FYI: PATA=IDE, same thing, different terms)
That avoids the stress of the old drive trying to boot and, if you get access, you can copy the data directly to the newer PC. It also means if there are problems reading the data you can use modern recovery software to try and still get to the data.
Otherwise, if you just boot the old PC and it works, you still have to figure out a way to copy the data. Without USB that means burning a CD, assuming the old PC has a CD drive capable of that, not a given on a 1997 PC.
Edit: Ok. I get it, there are adapters. He can plug a USB into his old machine or his PATA into a new machine. Still, KISS is best, I stand by my advice to just use a cheap usb adapter and connect it to a new machine that way.
Some cryptomining malware is able to detect when you open Task Manager, and then stop what it is doing in order to hide itself until you close it. That's my first guess.
Try Process Hacker.
get the program WinDirStat there are others like it but this is the one i like
My guess windows updated and you have a windows.old that is large. (this is to recover in case the update broke)
A few ideas:
-Generate and give her a Google app password. I'm not entirely sure if it will work but it would be a great solution if it does.
-Setup a forwarder, so that all of your incoming emails are sent to another account. Perhaps your boss can create an email address specifically to receive these emails
-Link your Google account to her's. This would probably be the best solution. You can find this in the settings here under "grant access to your account".
Overall however, your boss needs to be educated on company security. This idea is terrible for more than one reason: it gives your entire company a single point of failure if that password list is hacked (as well as discouraging good password habits), it prevents the company from using two-factor authentication like you mentioned, it sure as hell hurts the trust relationship between her and her employees, and not to mention it's a horribly inefficient way of doing things.
If you want to to be believable, spec a VM with something reasonable, and then install the Top 10 things from download.com without unchecking anything.
The machine will crawl like a glacier and the scammer will think he's found the sucker of the year.
> SSID (hide it for good measure)
No don't do this, there is no real security measure here, and some devices can have a hard time find the network, not worth it.
The best bet is to change the password to a not easily guessable phrase and monitor devices on the network from time to time.
Because MS wants to make lots of money.
Why not try LibreOffice completely free? It does absolutely everything that MS proprietary software does that the vast majority of users are likely to ever need.
Query your E-mail with: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
That should allow you to ascertain if there has been any breaches.
Otherwise, it's possible that your credentials may have been stolen some way or the other.
That location may not be 'precise' - because it's simply an approximation in many cases.
When we say wipe it, we mean overwrite every bit of it. Don't just delete and think you're clear. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, here's a site that'll explain and help you through it.
I'm sorry for your loss. I would recommend contacting WhatsApp directly to see how they could help under these circumstances. https://www.whatsapp.com/contact/
I wouldn't want you to risk loosing those memories.
Bit late, but will still go at it. When he said "wire shaked", it means he used a packet sniffing tool called Wireshark (https://www.wireshark.org/).
When someone sets up a voice call in over steam, the connection doesn't go through their servers, it direct connects you to the other person's computer (for less lag presumably), because of this you can use Wireshark to get someone's ip (https://nictutorial.wordpress.com/2014/06/19/wire-shark-finding-your-friends-ip-through-steam/).
Now that isn't enough to get your real name, but having your ip is enough to get about where you live. So if he was able to associate your steam username with a profile you might have somewhere else, i.e. you use the same profile name for your twitter or something. He might have been able to find your real name. Then using (most likely) Facebook he could search your name and confirm with the ip location which person is actually you (if you have a common name). And bam, you've been dox-ed...
Quick note, Wireshark will do absolutely nothing bad to your computer, it just looks at packets, there is a 99% chance they did nothing to harm your computer, and I severally doubt some fear-monger on steam would have the skill/knowledge/motive to actually do anything bad.
You're more than welcome, as always. I just had the time to kill right then and thought it would be better to get it all out they way then rather than over the course of a few days of back and forth comment replies :)
For the techs interested, it was nothing that a cocktail of Combofix and MalwareBytes couldn't sort. Also did a little bit of software updating and Autoruns tuning while the scan was going.
While I'm here, I'll take the opportunity to whore out my Google site: TheFixList. It's already been up in /r/computertechs, /r/sysadmin and /r/techprotips but I don't think I put it here.
It's nice to help others, y'know? :)
I've been using CCleaner for a good 10 years now. It was actually called 'Crap Cleaner' back then. Never had any issues with it or any other Piriform software.
That being said, I'm not a fan of the recent 'Active monitoring' feature and have switched that off.
Echoing what /u/kd7eir has said, check the URL options here, as you may need to now manually set them back. If you don't have any sort of access to phpMyAdmin or access to the database directly, we can dig some more to find another way in perhaps...
​
But, once you get those values fixed, it won't be as simple as saying "this site is https now". You'll need an SSL certificate to make your site have a legitimate HTTPS presence. Depending on how the site is set up, Let's Encrypt is a great way to set up SSL. I suggest taking a look there and certainly feel free to ask further questions f they come up.
My guess is that he is monitoring traffic over the router.
The best solution I advise is approaching him about it in a calm manner, don't blame or point fingers, and state what have observed and how it makes you feel uncomfortable.
EDIT: In the event that you would like to keep your data secure, you can encrypt it. (Also, just so the mods know, I wasn't offering relationship advice. Just a simple solution of user action.)
Here's a very simple explanation of encryption.
Encryption is like putting a massive wall with a huge steel door around your information. Only you would be able to access it, as you'd have the only key. The ONLY way he'd be able to gain your information again is if he used on of his forensic/security tools, which you said you're confident that he wouldn't use them.
Here are some simple(slightly) articles on encryption of the devices you mentioned.
iPhone This will encrypt your data stored on your phone.
Mac This will do the same for the data on your Mac.
Unfortunately I don't believe there is a way you can keep him from monitoring your traffic over the monitor, short of locking him out of it.
EDIT: I'm so stoked right now! My first relatively high rated fix!
This makes a huge difference if you live somewhere with shared walls between units. I use the "Wifi analyzer" app on Android to check which channels are being used by neighbors.
Download the Sysinternals tool "Process Explorer" (here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx )... launch it.. and go under the OPTIONS menu and turn ON the "VirusTotal" functionality. (it may make you agree to a EULA...,etc)
The "VirusTotal" feature... takes a snapshot of all your currently running processes --- and compares them against the virus-database up on www.virustotal.com .... that should tell you whether any of your current Processes are suspicious or not.
I've used Offline NT Editor several times and it's pretty easy. Just burn to disk and boot from it. It walks you through the steps to remove the admin password.
I believe I have the solution:
Lenovo released a BIOS upgrade, one of the issues addressed is 3Gb of memory showing, if more than that installed.
>[Problem fixes]
>- Fix an issue where an invalid password error is encountered when attempting to use a supervisor password as a current password while a user logons BIOS setup with a supervisor password.
>- Fix an issue where usable memory is displayed under 3GB on 64bit OS even 4GB or more memory installed.
>- Fix an issue that a USB device is not recognized by Windows connecting to the Alway On USB enabled port.
BIOS update utility and rough instructions
I would recommend the bootable CD if you have a disk drive and aren't familiar with updating a BIOS, also check the hash of the CD before you start (here is a md5 hash checking utility), very simple to check a hash, burn the CD and see if the hash matches a second burned CD, not 100% full proof but not bad considering Lenovo haven't given a hash to check against.
Enjoy your 12Gb :)
Edit: This will sound stupid but why are people down voting the accepted solution?
Did you store your documents in the Minecraft folder? That's the only way I can think it would delete them.
Give this a run, it might be able to recover your stuff;
to clarify for readers that's https://1password.com/ and not one single password. i personally prefer keypass, but these are all good. my only recommendation is that for anything extra important, mislabel it, use 2fa, and change the pass a bit from what is there.
Something you can do is visit haveibeenpwned.com
Here, you can enter your various email addresses, to see if they have been in any 'confirmed breaches'. If so, prioritize changing those passwords first.
​
Second, it has a section you can use to test passwords, to see if they are also involved in known breaches.
This is not unique to Windows, it's true of almost any filesystem that doesn't go out of its way to do anything differently.
Also, you don't need special software, use the command > CIPHER /W:C:\
to clean all the free space on your drive with a multi-pass wipe.
You do need special software if you want to wipe the page file; however a valid workaround is to set page file to zero, reboot, then wipe the free space.
Multi-pass overwrites on modern disk drives are no longer really neccesary, there's no real need to wait for more than one pass to complete.
Edit: syntax (thanks)
Edit 2: I want to point out that there is one other thing to worry about: those pesky deleted file names in the directories. With only the first character lost, it's still easy for someone to determine what "?ap_to_pot_farm.pdf" probably was. There's no really trivial way to flush these, but Jetico BCWipe handles it quite nicely, in addition to wiping free space, file slack, and page file space. I don't know how reliable creating a bunch of random file names in the same folder would be at doing this.
There is literally a tool just for this. I think I saw one of them in an iFixit video and I think they still sell it.
I found it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/GripStick-Headphone-Plug-Extraction-Tool/dp/B01M19LY2F?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_marketplace
This is probably for tech repair shops but OP can consider buying one of these too.
If you are going to use a VPN please just cough up the few bucks a year rather than using Hola. Faster, infinitely more secure, and you don't have to facilitate their traffic. Private Internet Access is a good one.
Your absolute best bet is to stop using FRAPS. It's a great program that records video in an AMAZING quality, but that's because it's completely and totally uncompressed.
A wonderful free alternative is Open Broadcaster Software. It's made for livestreaming, but it also has the ability to record video like FRAPS. It's got a few settings you can tinker with to adjust quality and size. The best part is that it's completely free, no limited trial BS. If you want an example of some footage captured using OBS, you can check out an unreleased Let's Play I recorded here.
I've seen two dozen computers handled by these cnuts, and have not seen anything malign installed on them. What I have seen is them attempt and reattempt to get people who haven't known enough to tell them to fuck off to sign up -- they'll try and put the fear of Dog into you, but -- for the moment -- that's it.
Download and run Combofix and don't answer your phone.
BIOS passwords are often poorly implemented and easily defeated by simply pulling out the mobo battery to reset the CMOS.
Windows passwords are laughably easy to just delete or get around.
It's also likely that your password just isn't as strong as you think it is and he's guessing it.
If you really want to lock things down, I'd encrypt the drive with Veracrypt, follow their steps for System Encryption, and make sure the password you use is something strong and non-personal that he can't guess. There is no way around this password, so make sure you do not forgot it, as you'll have to type it in before windows loads. If you forget it, you can't access anything on your computr and will have to wipe it and reinstall windows.
I'd also highly recommend backing up any important data before encrypting the drive.
You should check out an app called geavi if you have an android device. It's kind of neat, you can record in the background with the screen turned off or whilst using another app. (I am one of the developers, but it's still a neat app! )
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amii.geavi
Havent understood your case fully but ill do my rant.
Receiving 100% is a Windows 8/10 stupidity. Download "wifi analyzer " app (windows and android only) to understand the signal strength.
The usual problem is, the extender uses half its bandwidth to capture and other half to transmit. so when it is at a place where it receives, say, 50% of the original routers signal, it uses half its capacity to take that 50 i.e. it can take 25 of that 50 and uses the other half of its capacity to transmit that 25. So inherintly this is not a great model.
instead run a ethernet cable from the downstairs modem's out to upstairs and reconfigure the second modem to be act as an Access Point. should retain maximum speed.
this one https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wifi.analyzer&hl=en
Check out Professor Messer's free Online Videos. They definitely helped me when I was getting my A+ Certification. Don't worry too much about the exam, most of it is common sense and memorization.
The software that Elliot used to mask the data was DeepSound. It's indeed steganography.
[This thread on /r/mrrobot](//reddit.com/r/MrRobot/comments/3gua5x/spoilers_for_anyone_wondering_why_elliot_would/) discusses it (obvious spoilers within, for those who have yet to see it).
Yes, PS4 is much easier in this than an Xbox One is.
If the hard drive is damaged, you can buy pretty much any other 2.5 inch hard drive (or even an SSD) to replace it. Once you do that, you can go to Sony's website and download the newest and latest firmware to flash to the new hard drive/SSD to have a working PS4 again.
Hopefully you have a backup somewhere, online backups through PS+, or the drive isn't damaged enough that you can't get those back in this case.
If the drive is not damaged but simply corrupted, try formatting the hard drive on your computer. Formatting the drive will delete everything off of it, so save anything important from the drive, if possible, before formatting.
Once you remove the drive from your PS4 (removing the drive depends on which model you have; check YouTube for tutorials on how to access it), use an adapter like one of these to access the drive's contents on your computer to see if the files are there and/or if the drive has been damaged.
Edit: so apparently you can’t do much if you connect it to your PC according to other comments. So I guess disregard that part of my post.
It's an M.2 ssd. Looking up the X300s it looks like it is a Sata M.2 drive. You can use an enclosure like this one. https://www.amazon.com/Aluminum-Type-C-Enclosure-Portable-External/dp/B0788HBLDZ/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542054496&sr=8-1-spons&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=sata+m.2+enclosure&psc=1
Sorry about formatting, I'm on mobile.
Check your email address at https://haveibeenpwned.com and see if your email and password have leaked from any services. There's a chance that might tell you how they got in. Immediately chance all of your passwords to something else (don't use the same password for every site)
You could also download an app / add-on called OneTab (Link). You click it and it closes all open tabs, and makes them links on a single tab (thus, OneTab). Then you can keep them in your OneTab history and click any of those links selectively if you like.
The porn sites in the protest are blocking only California IPs since it's a California ballot initiative.
But really, Prop 60 is an existential threat to porn as we know it. Most porn is made in California, so this is a big deal. It'll open the door to censorship and lawsuits that could cripple the adult industry. So, if you like & support porn, vote NO on prop 60!!
But to fix your current dilemma, other users have suggested VPN. This is a good option (I recommend either Mullvad or NordVPN, but there are others). All you need is an IP outside of California and you should be all set.
Happy fapping
edit: clarity
I work in tech support and have seen many of the same emails to people. I can assure you that your phone and computer aren't infected or hacked as the email claims, but your login data may have been compromised in the past due to a data breach from a large company. The crook from the email most likely went on the dark web and purchased a list of login data from someone selling it after a hack was done to a large company. He then used it to craft a ransom and send it as a blast email to all of the emails from his list. The issue isn't on your end but rather the security of the companies that you trust when signing up for their services. You can check this site (https://haveibeenpwned.com) to see which companies have been comprised (which your login has been a part of). Good tips are to change your passwords frequently and never use the same password for everything. Better yet, use password managers like lastpass, dash lane, or 1password.
Unlocker 1.9.2 will delete anything. It's a powerful tool, so if you have anyone else that uses your computer, i'd suggest uninstalling it after use.
I always use Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder
You can download fully legit Windows7 ISO's from here:
I'd recommend installing https://windirstat.net/ and removing files you can from the C Drive.
This program will help visualize the space used on your HDD.
Depending on if you use the Hibernate function that can remove a good chunk of GB from your HDD by deleting it.
Follow the Step by steps here: https://www.nextofwindows.com/what-is-hiberfilsys-and-how-to-delete-in-windows-7-free-up-hard-drive-space
I had done this for an upgrade to Windows 10 on my brothers PC and it can squeeze that bit of space you need.
Do it DoD style
Format in Windows
Download https://dban.org/
Boot using a usb or disc
Follow the prompts
Then take the disk or USB outside
Throw it directly onto concrete or uae pickaxe (what I use)
Burn it (optional)
Done!
Hello! The answers above, likely are going to be both a mix of 2 and 3 are the correct statements.
I would not expect that you should have an issue without it. I've replaced multiple OEM m.2 drives in Dell and HP laptops and most of them have something like this going on. Sometimes more involved than others.
You could peel that one off the OEM drive and likely slip it over the XPS drive, but need to be careful if there is any areas where a short may occur so risk might not be worth it.
If you have the room, it would not hurt to try something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Laptop-Heatsink-Thermal-Pads%EF%BC%8CHeat-Copper/dp/B07YC1HTFR/ref=sr\_1\_5?dchild=1&keywords=thin+m2+heat+spreader&qid=1621545139&s=electronics&sr=1-5
One thing you can do if you want to store more stuff in ram is to create a RAM disk.
A RAM disk is a temporary disk that writes and reads everything stored on it into ram, which means that writing and reading from it would be insanely fast, which would be good for games and such.
The disadvantage of RAM disks is that since everything is stored in RAM and RAM is not persistent (everything saved in RAM disappears after you shut down your machine) you will lose everything store in the disk when you reboot.
So everything that is saved to the RAM disk has to be moved back to the harddrive before you reboot, if you don't you will lose all of the data.
if you want to create a RAM disk then you can use this program: RAM Disk
Check task manager and see what is causing the CPU spikes. Also, you could clean the vents/fan of the laptop with a can of compressed air, as it may have dust build up. Another thing you could do is check the HDD health using hdtune.
Look for Hirens 15.1 (google this - youll have to find a torrent for it AFAIK) and use that. It has password changing tools built into it.
Another option is a tool like this - http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/
Look into second factor authentication. Here is one version of a hardware key that is needed to login, they can have your password but without this key they cant get in https://www.amazon.com/Yubico-YubiKey-NEO-USB-Authentication/dp/B00LX8KZZ8
You can also use google authenticator, requiring a code each time there is a new login attempt.
I wallpaper'd my bathroom with these things. Nowadays, after you get so many (I think it's 6) your ISP might drop you, but you're not going to court.
Do remember that you not getting sued is at the discretion of the copyright holder, though. I cannot in good conscience encourage anyone to break the law, but I can point out that enforcement is by bots that initiate or join the torrent swarm, then note the IP addresses of other members of the swarm and forward those IPs to the ISP, who knows which user account is assigned to which IP. I can also point out that PeerGuardian blocks known IPs of copyright-enforcement bots and that VPNs will make it impossible for them to determine your IP address if you do connect to a bot by accident.
If you're measuring that by right clicking and properties, know that WinSXS uses softlinks that cause the files in to be counted many times while they are only stored on disk once.
That said, have a look at the contents of the c:\windows\temp folder. You can also erase the service pack and update uninstallation information.
check your chrome extensions. Your chrome profile would sync between the machines including the malware plugin.
http://download.cnet.com/Avast-Browser-Cleanup/3000-2144_4-75872295.html
odds are they have it installed via enterprise policy so it will prevent you from deleting it directly.
if the avast browser tool does not remove it you can go to group policy folder and delete what you find: http://malwaretips.com/blogs/installed-enterprise-policy-removal/
Literally 2nd thing on google if you type "windows 7 change color scheme prompt". I'm not being an ass to you for not looking that up, because it's pretty obscure and it's easy to think that nobody has had that problem before, but in future please google first, make thread second.
Such as use common sense and don't click on stuff that looks fishy. Especially something like this: (NSFW!) http://i.gyazo.com/ff113e6ae6ce62133844190fb0e50937.png
EDIT: in all seriousness: If you use Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Internet Explorer, a great extension to get is WOT (Web of Trust), it'll warn you when you're about to enter a bad site. https://www.mywot.com/en/download
It is most likely a virus-infected email, good thing that you opened it on your phone. Try to avoid opening suspicious mail and also just delete it right away.
EDIT: I have also received the same mail, it probably means that your email got leaked out by a database branch (eg. Adobe, XSplit, etc.), haveibeenpwned.com is a great website to find out if your email address(es) or your username have been leaked out by a database branch.
That's because technically it's only a dual floating point module processor, with 2 cores per common FP module.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A10-5800K+APU&id=1446
Sounds like you did a cut and paste instead of a copy and paste. I always do copy and paste when it's important, then delete once the copy completes successfully and I can verify the copy works as intended. You can try using this on both drives. I'm not sure if there is a program that can repair files from two halves of them, but I know Windows will just 'lose' files if a cut and paste operation gets ended abruptly, it's happened to me on less important files before many times. Good luck to you. The linked file recovery program is the only free one I've found that has the best success rate of finding deleted files (assuming the drive was writing the data as it was receiving it, if some data was in the drives buffer, those bits will be lost). Most drives will buffer the data then write it once the buffer is full to make writes faster, most buffers are either 32 or 64MB.
As far as getting the drive working without a reformat, try and recover the bits first that are 'corrupted', then try running a filesystem check on the drive to repair the file table. Worse case scenario is you'll have to reformat it, if there are any files on there that aren't backed up, the linked recovery program should be able to recover them.
So you want to become a script kiddy and try and hack with backtrack 5 eh. That's not really the way to learn, you want to read read and read security books. ( http://www.amazon.com/Certified-Ethical-Hacker-Exam-Prep/dp/0789735318 )
To install a OS to a USB use this program, ( http://www.linuxliveusb.com/ ) it will download it, format the drive, and install it to USB for you.
If you are truly interested in learning a different OS, I suggest Linuxmint, Ubuntu or Fedora. Once you get your feet wet with those, try a Gentoo box.
Unfortunately, OP's question wasn't covered in the FAQ. However, quoting from their Win10 spec page:
> Microsoft account required for some features
That'd lean me towards an online account not being required.
I think you should install this tiny program called Everything. Basically, It's a search engine that locates files and folders by filename instantly for Windows. Unlike Windows search "Everything" initially displays every file and folder on your computer.
Top of the description of the cable.
"This is a the USB Charging Cable for Xbox 360 Wireless Game Controller"
Xbox controllers have to be connected to a computer using a wireless receiver, not directly to PC as it only works using a wireless adapter.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LBLBZ4V/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_Q4MKBWP23YPR94GD8PBH
From Microsoft website. https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/xbox-360/xbox-on-windows/accessories/xbox-controller-for-windows-setup
"Note:A standard Xbox 360 wireless controller can be connected to a Windows PC, but you must have an Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver to play games, even if you have an Xbox 360 Play & Charge Kit."
Could be that your new pc isn't able to access the 5G network speeds. Check which wifi chip you're using and see if it has 5G capabilities. If not, you could either replace the chip or pick up a USB wifi adapter off of Amazon. I use this one on my old gaming rig:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CCMUN8C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Works like a charm. Doesn't quite reach the download speed of my iphone on the same wifi but I've never had an issue with it playing online. GL!
If you are still using that laptop, you can buy your own 240GB ssd for less than $30 and just clone the OS to it. They'll never know or care... and you'll be happier at work. Worth the out-of-pocket money in my mind.
Try entering the IP address 104.17.154.236 into the browser instead (TunnelBear's IP address). If you reach a Cloudflare site warning you that "Direct IP Access not allowed" then changing your DNS server should work.
Guide here.
Instead of running cables everywhere check into Ethernet over Power. Cable plugs into your router then into a box in an outlet. Then from another outlet to a box and you can plug in a cable there and add wifi boosters/router from there.
One of my client's received this exact email. Delete it, change all of your passwords & enable 2FA (to be extra careful), & don't easily believe everything you read. Check out Troy Hunt's https://haveibeenpwned.com.
Check out http://www.hdtune.com/ , there's a free tool that's about 10mb or so, do a benchmark test (or whatever the first one is), you should have about 50mb/s across the graph. If it's stuffed, it might start at 50mb/s then drop to 1 and so on - it'll be quite erratic on the graph. Or it might just trawl along at like 5mb/s.
I've had hard drives pass SMART but still be really bad in the benchmark test. So, give that a go.
Now it gets interesting :). If it was me, I'd download a copy of Kali linux and either write it to a USB drive or burn it to a DVD.
Either way, I'd boot from it and run aeromon-ng, which is part of the aircrack-ng suite. It's a command line tool that lists all of the wireless devices that your card can receive along with their MAC addresses, SSIDs, signal strengths, etc. From the MAC address, you can find out the manufacturer here, and if you put a pie pan or some similar reflector behind your wi-fi antenna and move it around, you can find an approximate direction from which the signal is coming. That should get you started in unraveling the mystery.
Solved by using Hiren's BootCD:http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
Has a "BIOS Master Password Generator Collection of password generator tools to reset BIOS Power on Password / Admin password on Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, Compaq, Hewlett Packard, Phoenix and Samsung Laptops"
NOTE: I tried copying off the exe file of the tool from usb stick but my AV promptly removed it, stating it is a trojan horse.
Virustotal result: http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan/report.html?id=7a12455f194d01ec2f73c64413596b8f2554bf2150f2183ae67b5e4b93db0e7b-1299320224
From what I gather the executable is packed in a way to make decompilation difficult, this particular packing sets of a large number of Antivirus applications, including the one used at work, it is a false positive.
[](/solved)
Yes, it is possible.
First sign out of your mother's account from your phone. This way, it will most likely remove all her contacts from your phone. Problem solved. BUT if those contacts have synced with your account as you said it does sync every day then there needs to be manual work.
Open this site, it is Google official contacts page. Open it in a browser on computer or phone OR install the contacts application from play store.
Now you can select multiple contacts and delete them from your account.
Depending on how technical the roommate is he could have installed a custom root cert into OP's local cert store and be reading HTTPS in plain text if he has a decent firewall and knows what he's doing.
A L2TP or PPTP VPN that avoids DNS leak is your best bet.
I'm a big fan of Private Internet Access but Nord also has some positive reviews.
Try out this site with some of your email addresses and see if they were part of a breach:
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I'd grab LastPass or KeePass and update all your passwords and use MFA or the LastPass Authenticator.
Vpns aren't really made for anonymity. It's mainly used to encrypt data going to the VPN. After it leaves the VPN on the other side it is no longer encrypted. so usually the only thing that you are hiding is what you are doing to your ISP.
Look at privacytools.io for more help.
As many others kind of pointed out, you should stop using Audacity. The newer owners of the project has went full in on monetizing it and basically turn it into full spyware.
Version 2.4.2 is the last version to exist before they added all of these changes.
You can find the downloads here: https://www.fosshub.com/Audacity-old.html
The biggest fork I have seen so far going forward is Tenacity: https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity
I like to carry around a swiss army knife of sorts on a pendrive. with something like LiberKey I have a clean set of tools and apps to play with. I've also partitioned it to contain a portable CLI install of Ubuntu for times when the computer in question is unusable.
Here's a few useful apps I keep on my "fixstick":
Probably more but that's off the top of my head. Best part of the drive is that it has survived repeated trips through the washing machine and dryer. I had to make a makeshift casing out of a lego brick and hot glue xD
Running Windows 98 in this day and age is just asking for trouble, it is insecure and also incompatible with most modern software.
If you really want to use if for something then I'd recommend installing some lightweight Linux distribution like Puppy Linux on it.
Doing that should allow you to run some somewhat modern programs on it and keep it secure, though the performance will likely still be pretty poor due to the extremely old CPU and low amounts of RAM that I'm sure that machine comes with.
The people saying the processor is old are wrong. It's a Pentium Gold which is a 2018 processor. But it is one of the slower processors that Intel makes. For youtube and web browsing it will work fine. My only issue with the laptop is that in 2019, no one should be buying a laptop with a spinning disk.
The reason the 500gb laptop is cheaper than the smaller 128GB hdd laptop is for several of reasons. The first one being the 500gb drive is what's called a mechanical hard drive or "spinning disk" (HDD) where as the 128gb is most likely whats called a solid state drive (SSD). 500GB hdd tech has been around for 20 years at this point, they are slow and vulnerable to drops. SSDs have come down in price lately and are multitudes faster than an HDD and are less likely to fail from drops and moving your laptop. A 128gb ssd should be about the same price or less than a 500gb hdd when purchased on their own but Best Buy is probably raising the price a ton due to it being an SSD.
4GB of RAM is also pretty low for web browsing in 2019 as well.
Edit: If you are not going to be storing your images on the laptop, this one is a much better choice -
They log your data. While you can be embarrassed by your browsing activity, we have seen the first bank account closed due to political agenda. They figured their political leaning via data collection. Don't just hide it from your room-mate, stay safe in general. If you're going with a free vpn don't get anyrhing other then either ProtonVPN or Tunnelbear. Also, browse using Tor. They scramble and quickly change your IP address, your room mate will know your using Tor but won't know what you're doing. (Heads up, Tor is incredibly slow due to the changing of IP addresses, it'll take roughly 20 seconds normally to load a website.)
Also, human right 13: The right to privacy Assuming your in any of the countries that have to obey human rights, this is illegal.
I never tried it, but this might work.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arcai.netcut
Maybe, he will spend the night troubleshooting the problem instead of spending time with you.
I am having the exact same problem. Someone suggested moving the cursor to the bottom left of the screen. I tried it, and after a few seconds, the progress bar disapeared like normal.
Edit: This is where I got the advice.
Fraud is handled by police and your bank. Work with them to fix the charges.
As for the rest, shut down your computer, do not connect it to the Internet under any circumstances until you completely reformat the drives and reinstall everything. Also, if you choose to contact the police, do not reformat it until they tell you that you are safe to do so (they may need it for evidence) Use another safe computer (got a trusted friend or SO?) to imminently change the password for all of your accounts with access that have any to your payment information (PayPal, Steam, Amazon, Chase, etc.) as well as any other accounts suspected to be used in this hack (Microsoft account if on Windows 8+?). Also check this site for other possible compromised accounts. Afterwards, set up 2FA on as many of those accounts as possible.
I have a couple of those. I have a program called IP Webcam from the app store, and then I run ISpy on my computer to view and record using motion detection, and to time lapse throughout the day on a schedule.
It works really well. Now I just need a few more, and maybe a fish-eye lens, for some of the wider areas I want to monitor.
kheprisetup appears to be dropped by various installers (possibly from questionable download sites...):
File-Cat.Goes.Fishing.v11.13.2019_31819.msi
Mario-Superstar-Baseball_8212.msi
Mari.7z_25622.msi
DUSK.v1.7.24.rar_10788.msi
Spotify_56798.msi
With how the technology works, you cannot. You have a few options.
PeerBlock / P2P Guardian - auto-blocks networks that your computer tries to connect to that are known to bust P2P traffic and users. It is at best 50% effective, as it doesn't hide anything from your ISP and if the lists it uses are out of date, you're boned. Better than nothing but it's like a pirate with a pissed off chimp for a leg - not much use.
Proxy/VPN - this is what ya need. Go to and check out their suggestions for VPN services but I like BTGuard. Works...alright and I'm fairly sure my problems I had were the ISP I had being very aggressive in finding P2P traffic. If you set your torrents max speeds low, it shouldn't cause any blips to show on their radars.
Your router will definitely give you active connections.
You can also download an application from the app store called Fing. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.overlook.android.fing not sure of the link on iOS it basically does the same thing if you do not know your admin password.
You should check https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to see if any of your personal information has been leaked from a data hack.
I would also download a password manager. I use LastPass, not only will it store the passwords but it will generate passwords for you to use if you need them.
Yumi can create issues if you also have windows ISO there. I have switched over to Easy2Boot since over a year. It's a lovely little program. You need to run it only once on the USB and later on you can just go on copying the iso's to it. The menu is automatically created at boot time.
EDIT: Forgot your side question. Here's the iso's that I have
Acronis True Image
Easeus Data Recovery
Hiren's Boot CD
Minitools partition wizard
NT Password Recovery
Sea Tools for DOS
Various AV Rescue Disks - AVG, Avira, Bit Defender, Comodo, Kaspersky
I'd strongly recommend for the sake of your privacy to not use a free VPN. It's a really bad idea. PIA is cheap as others have mentioned.
EDIT: If you're going for even cheaper, use a referral credit to get $5-25 dollars in credit (depending on what you can find) for DigitalOcean and roll a VPN yourself using Algo. You could also play with Amazon EC2's free tier.
I ran into this problem a little while ago on my desktop. I ended up asking how to fix it on superuser.com.
It turns out, I didn't seat the RAM completely into its socket. It looked and felt like it was in. Windows could see it was there, but it couldn't use it all.
Double and triple check that it's seated completely in the sockets. That may be the problem.
If that's not the issue, refer to your owner's manual. Often times they will mention the maximum limit of RAM the motherboard can handle. On a laptop, it may not be able to hold 12GB.
I use LastPass regularly. It is very easy to use and very convenient. You can use it on mobile too. Also you can access all your passwords from anywhere in the world through the website if you want.
All your data is also is encrypted and protected with a master password you set up yourself. This means no one gets to access the content of your saved data except you.
It was also not affected during the famous Heartbleed incident.
http://www.professormesser.com/free-a-plus-training/free-a-plus/
A+ material is where you want to start for training on how computers work. This site has a bunch of free videos organized into a curriculum that covers tons of topics. You can go through them all, or just look at ones that interest you.
So it sounds like the base station signal is interfering with the wifi, so something needs to get moved to remedy the issue. Something like this wireless card might be a good option,since you can position the antenna away from other things https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0713RRZMB/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_XeN5CbS8CPZXG
If you have a USB wireless card, you can get a USB extension cable and just go that way. It's cheaper than a whole new wireless card anyways.
There is Freedome and it's trial but I can't say whether you'll be able to use it or not. I use it myself and it works fine for me anyways. As for changing your IP-address, you won't really be able to change your external IP-address without some kind of extra tool doing it for you (such as a VPN). Good luck though! As I see it, the more people use VPN's, the better. People deserve to be anonymous when they want to be.
As an IT person, I can say that there are plenty of people in my field who are complete douchebags to users and go all Nick Burns on them.
http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php
Independent 3rd party comparison of AV, with listing of false positives, updated frequently.
Some reading material, about MSE and why you shouldn't use it most of the time.
I use avast. It hasnt let me down, ive installed it on tons of clients pcs. its a great simple antivirus that gives decent reminders with few adds. Basic av is free.
Using this program I have had success in getting a computer that was incredibly slow internet wise of course going the speed it should, on the slider up top just set it to your speed click optimal on the radio button on the bottom and apply. I cannot guarantee anything of course i hope it does something though
Log into your Netflix account on a desktop, go to "My Account", and click "Viewing Activity". Perhaps this information might explain why you kept getting hacked. Look for unusual logins after you created your new Netflix account. After you logged in Netflix on the same computer with your new email address, look for logins that you did not make. If you see any, then your computer might be compromised.
Backup your data and reinstall your operating system.
Check your email in this website to see if your information was compromised.
Uninstall any unnecessary apps on your mobile devices.
It's possible your Anti-Virus scanners aren't finding anything because the Remote-Control/Access is a legit program (IE = if an exploit or trojan opened the Remote-Desktop ports or installed something like VNC or TeamViewer,etc)
If that theory is correct.. then your only option really is to go through your machine with a fine-tooth comb and look for any "remote-control" apps that YOU didn't install.
Alternatively.. you could use the official Microsoft Sysinternals tool named "Process Explorer" (download here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx ) ... open/launch it and click on OPTIONS and enable the VirusTotal feature. The VirusTotal feature takes a snapshot/fingerprint of all your running processes and compares it to the virus-database up on www.virustotal.com .... and will tell you if any of your running processes are suspicious.
Another approach you could use.. would be to use a command like NETSTAT -A ... to view all open network connections.. and see where the traffic is going.
flussence is right, since it passes the POST you won't have many problems to get rid of this. It may be a bootsector virus, you'll most likely have to fix that with a virus-scan/fixmbr command. Try to start up the system with a live-cd like flussence suggested, ideally with one that includes a virus scanner. Good luck, and please point your friend towards one of the many free porn sites that don't screw(badly) with your PC... ;)
as //u/knight_47 said put adblockPlus on all browsers on her computer once you sort out the damage.
I recommend http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ for help getting it right again.
Also I recommend https://www.mywot.com/ browser add on that flags all links with a small traffic light red yellow green advisory and blocks malicious sites with a warning page
The bundle of connections all together are the ones on the motherboard. The XFX card at the bottom is an addon graphics card, which takes priority for the computer's video output when it's plugged into the motherboard.
From the top going down and to the right, you've got
And then below all of that, you've got a nice XFX video card with 3 of the ports blocked off for god knows why. The HDMI port down there is what you'd connect your monitor to.
The guy who linked the Amazon HDMI to DVI cable is the correct cable. They sell one at Best Buy for $35. DON'T spend $25 extra for no reason. I would suggest spending the $6.99 on amazon and doing Prime Today for $2.99 instead if you have amazon prime or know someone who can order you that cable on Prime Today. Give em $10 later.
The back of your monitor has the blue (VGA) and white (DVI) connections probably.
EDIT: Not to confuse you, but I see some people on here are questioning the cable with a lack of knowledge on their part. DVI-D to HDMI is a bi-directional cable that works going either direction, so it doesn't matter if it's advertised as a DVI to HDMI or HDMI to DVI in this instance. Just as long as it doesn't say DVI-I or DVI-A you should be fine. The amazon one is fine.