- Apr 10, 2013
- 15
- 3
- 10,560
Hi everyone-
Here is my situation. I have a home-built rig that I bought each piece literally brand-new, built myself, and installed a brand-new store-bought copy of Windows 10 from the Windows 10 USB Stick. Perfectly new and perfectly good. Never a problem.
About two months ago I got the yen to play some old video games in my particular area of interest (actual modern naval warfare) and downloaded 688i Hunter Killer (a submarine simulator) Apparently it was packaged with some sort of semi-malicious software that is not necessarily a 'virus' but some sort of malware or spyware or something like that (and some sort of toolbar.) It also might have come from the program I needed to download in order to 'mount' a virtual DVD drive in order to play the game, I noticed on a few Google searches people comment that this once-popular software seemed to be bundled with malware now. I can't remember the name to be honest, ISO something or other.) McAfee had let me know there was a Trojan and said it quarantined it. I noticed in the CCLeaner programs list there was a few names I didn't recognize, which tipped me off to a problem. So a manual scan with Malwarebytes told me there were a few other problems, which I had to remove- but they did not actually remove, it took a lot of work going into the hidden ProgramData\ folder and deleting this damn Yahoo searchbar that kept re-appearing, but I finally was able to isolate and delete what I believe to have been the problem program/files (long character-string full of #s and letters as the app name and associated files)..... think I have removed them totally. I will note that I had had an E: DVD drive in My Computer area , but after removing the suspect ISO-software, it's gone. Also , incidentially, the game won't run anymore because it thinks the disc isn't in the drive (there never was a drive to begin with, but this is not the reason I bother everyone here.)
Because I was a little miffed that McAfee had missed this stuff, and even Malwarebytes didn't get it out completely (it THOUGHT it removed it all, but it did not. At least it noticed, I guess...) I decided to download and install Bitdefender for the month (having to uninstall McAfee temporarily), knowing that I still had my McAfee subscription till May, I would try a different program and see if it found anything problematic immediately or during the course of the month. Bitdefender never found anything for the month, I wound up uninstalling when my 30 days were over, and putting McAfee back on (about a week ago).
However, I notice now, when I run the full Mcafee system scan and get the results, whereas I used to always have 4 "Boot records" or something like that , on the Scan Results on McAfee, it doesn't say anything about them. Not 4, not 2, not 1, not even listed. Just basically Files Scanned = xyz Problems=0 done.
Did I screw something up here, or by using Bitdefender it changed something on my system? I do notice that there are bdfiles all over the place on my C: drive even though I told Bitdefender to remove itself completely. I am not 100% sure what the "Boot Records" even do, so just because they're not showing up on the McAfee scan results may not be a problem at all... I just notice that it was like that for a year and a half, and suddenly, not there.
I feel like an idiot for downloading software that introduced a problem to me, I just thought with both McAfee's "always on protection", plus regular scans, Plus regular Malwarebytes scans, I'd be protected, stupid I know.
Ok thanks much.
Here is my situation. I have a home-built rig that I bought each piece literally brand-new, built myself, and installed a brand-new store-bought copy of Windows 10 from the Windows 10 USB Stick. Perfectly new and perfectly good. Never a problem.
About two months ago I got the yen to play some old video games in my particular area of interest (actual modern naval warfare) and downloaded 688i Hunter Killer (a submarine simulator) Apparently it was packaged with some sort of semi-malicious software that is not necessarily a 'virus' but some sort of malware or spyware or something like that (and some sort of toolbar.) It also might have come from the program I needed to download in order to 'mount' a virtual DVD drive in order to play the game, I noticed on a few Google searches people comment that this once-popular software seemed to be bundled with malware now. I can't remember the name to be honest, ISO something or other.) McAfee had let me know there was a Trojan and said it quarantined it. I noticed in the CCLeaner programs list there was a few names I didn't recognize, which tipped me off to a problem. So a manual scan with Malwarebytes told me there were a few other problems, which I had to remove- but they did not actually remove, it took a lot of work going into the hidden ProgramData\ folder and deleting this damn Yahoo searchbar that kept re-appearing, but I finally was able to isolate and delete what I believe to have been the problem program/files (long character-string full of #s and letters as the app name and associated files)..... think I have removed them totally. I will note that I had had an E: DVD drive in My Computer area , but after removing the suspect ISO-software, it's gone. Also , incidentially, the game won't run anymore because it thinks the disc isn't in the drive (there never was a drive to begin with, but this is not the reason I bother everyone here.)
Because I was a little miffed that McAfee had missed this stuff, and even Malwarebytes didn't get it out completely (it THOUGHT it removed it all, but it did not. At least it noticed, I guess...) I decided to download and install Bitdefender for the month (having to uninstall McAfee temporarily), knowing that I still had my McAfee subscription till May, I would try a different program and see if it found anything problematic immediately or during the course of the month. Bitdefender never found anything for the month, I wound up uninstalling when my 30 days were over, and putting McAfee back on (about a week ago).
However, I notice now, when I run the full Mcafee system scan and get the results, whereas I used to always have 4 "Boot records" or something like that , on the Scan Results on McAfee, it doesn't say anything about them. Not 4, not 2, not 1, not even listed. Just basically Files Scanned = xyz Problems=0 done.
Did I screw something up here, or by using Bitdefender it changed something on my system? I do notice that there are bdfiles all over the place on my C: drive even though I told Bitdefender to remove itself completely. I am not 100% sure what the "Boot Records" even do, so just because they're not showing up on the McAfee scan results may not be a problem at all... I just notice that it was like that for a year and a half, and suddenly, not there.
I feel like an idiot for downloading software that introduced a problem to me, I just thought with both McAfee's "always on protection", plus regular scans, Plus regular Malwarebytes scans, I'd be protected, stupid I know.
Ok thanks much.
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