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I demand to know their name, then explain they’ve call the police hot line and to report a crime, they must give me their name and address. The call does not last long.

I think most windows secret forum users are often savvy about utilities and maintenance. However, for the vast number of people who are not, and they want a “set it and forget it” I think SM is probably the best one around. I pay the internet subscriptions for three housebound, computer beginner family members and they all love SM. After it scans, it does not perform a scorched earth approach and make changes. It makes a detailed list where users can determine what to do. Personally, I don’t like many third party utilities, but if needed one, it would be System Mechanic.

Most banks, etc have fraud departments so I forward scams to the appropriate place. I get B/A scams all the time and forward to the bank. Does it help? Who knows, but I’m trying.

I’m an old guy so I encourage them to continue because my son said “my computer’s okay”, but I worry about it such things. This prompts him/her to continue until we get to the place where they will remote into my machine to show all my problems.

I finally explain we can’t do that because my son’s had my machine for months. That’s why he said it’s okay.

They usually click off….I must really have a boring life because these little episodes make my day.

I installed Malwarebytes Anti Exploit. Does it work? No idea but cheap insurance. However, I also have a calendar reminder to piug in the USB drive at 2 pm on Saturdays. The backup runs at 2:15 and then I disconnect it.

A acquaintance of mine recently got hit with ransomware.

Does your friend have any idea how/why she got hit?

I have two disabled relatives and log into their machines about once a month to solve something. The p/w’s are new each time, so don’t see how hackers could access.

There is a link to dnld the decrypter, but I’m a little nervous to save it.
Opinions?

I demand to know how they got my number and then explain it’s a private line to the Sacramento Police Dept. That usually ends it…

The article was in the newsletter four days ago: Protecting your backup files from ransomware

Another related question: my other laptop is on the same home network as the primary, but it’s always left in hibernate mode. I don’t see how any kind of virus or ransom could ‘wake’ the second computer and infect it, but thought I’d ask here.

Robert,

Macrium Reflect is UEFI aware and will create boot media that will boot directly w/o changing the Secure Boot settings. I do this on all 4 of my Dell machines.

HTH :cheers:

Thanks. I did not know that, but also don’t have Macrium. I created bootable USB drives, and disabled UEFI, and that works for me.

Perhaps just my experience, but on my last four laptops one cannot simply boot to a USB or DVD or ext drive. Secure boot and UEFI will not allow it. Make all the changes you want to setup/bios and it still boots to normal C:/.

One must enter Settings from inside windows and click deeper into the menu to finally reach the Troubleshooting menu and it reboots to a dos-like screen, where the UEFI can be disabled. Of course Windows must bootable for this to work.

I read another method but have not tried it. Boot to Setup/bios [F2 or whatever] and inside the dos-like screen, click to boot menu.

It will say UEFI and you cannot change it. The change option is grayed out. However, you can arrow down to the password option. There you can create a setup password. Of course, you MUST write this down!

Once you have created a master password, you can change Secure Boot UEFI to Legacy.. Now you can change the boot sequence to your ext or DVD device.

Lots of experts here to clarify what I noted but it’s been over a year since I had to jump through these hoops and may not have it exactly right. Just wanted to say the old days of simply booting to Setup/bios and changing boot sequence are over.

I haven’t done OneDrive; but I have done other cloud services. If you remove your hard drive folders from the cloud network, that should stop the synchronization from happening.

I like OneDrive but want to sync when I want, not use auto sync. So far, “pause” seems to hold, but I really wanted to turn it off. Oh well

mrjimphelps,

Many thanks for those great links. I had tried to disable or turn off OneDrive sync to possibly avoid ransomware to also encrypt the cloud version of my files. I don’t know if this will work, but it seems like a good idea. Unfortunately, all I can find is “pause” Still looking.

Many thanks. Makes more sense, but this is with WiFi? Does it matter this laptop never leaves the house and uses CAT5, no wireless?