This is my first post, sorry if I make any mistakes (and sorry for the post being so long) . I bought a discontinued SSD laptop from ebay last year- big mistake, the seller scammed me selling it as brand new when it was actually used for a year before I got it (I found his photos). I only used it for 6 months,now the laptop shuts off less than 20 seconds after I press the power button or doesn't power up at all.
The series of unfortunate events : From the beginning Kapersky was never able to install, popups always appeared at startup as updates for Adobe Acrobat and Java or as chat log-ins for Yahoo and MSN (these programs appeared in the programs list in Control Panel). The laptop also froze occasionally esp. when online and once or twice the screen blacked out and restarted automatically. The whole time Windows Firewall was always on but Windows Defender never found anything. I installed Comodo Internet Security 2 weeks ago. A week after that I got a BSoD (the blue screen appeared).
The current problem started 2 days ago when the laptop suddenly lost power 15 minutes after startup while I was online, as if the plug had been yanked out but it hadn't. I pressed the power button and it began booting up but seconds later the power went out again. Pressing the button again immediately did nothing. It seemed to need a few minutes of being left alone to be able to start the normal boot-up sequence when the power button was pressed again, but every time it would turn off after several seconds and the next time I turned it on the boot-up started from scratch all over again (then turned off again). The laptop was using mains power at the time and the light indicating it was plugged in never went out. This problem started after 2 days of not having used the laptop (4 days ago).
I suspect malware was afraid of being found by Comodo and retaliated. However, Comodo never got the chance to do a full scan, just a quick scan that found nothing when I installed it 2 weeks ago. I didn't open Comodo after that actually, since I was going to let it scan when I wasn't busy because it was such a drag on resources.
Here are the basic specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit
Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400;
RAM 2.0 GB, DDR3 SDRAM - 800.0 MHz;
Hard Drive 128.0 GB SSD;
Network adapter Data Link Protocol Gigabit Ethernet
I haven't backed all of my data up, so I'm hoping to find a way to transfer my data first. Does anyone know how? Would I have to remove the SSD and take it to a PC technician? Then I'd like to wipe out everything since the virus seems really resilient but SSDs can't really be cleanly wiped. Would formatting from the OS disk be able to erase all the malware?
I didn't get the chance to do HijackThis. I searched through 8 pages and the closest posts I found are here. I hope this might make it a bit easier:
Computer shuts off by itself
System won't boot, restarts after BsoD
Complete crash and restart at random
Sorry this post is so long. I guess I crammed in too much Thank you very much for reading this.
Cheers,
~Alice