Forum Discussion
America Geeks
A friend of mine used this service to fix their computer. She did not know if she did the right thing and brought it to me to check out. I run Malewarbytes and Comodo Anit-virus. Both come back clean...
Ricky wrote:Uh oh. I wanted to uninstall this to be safe. However it is apparantly hidden. It is not a visible program that can be un-installed. Gonna run the suggested 2 Microsoft programs above.
Restore point?
Nope. Only 1 showing and it says Geek. So I am assuming they deleted all the restore points and that one most likely will include any virus or keylogger that may be in the machine.
The scan that is running now shows no infections so far. I will let it complete then I think I will do a recovery on the machine. She doesn't have anything important on it anyway. That seems like the safest way to insure it is gone.
The fact that all restore points have been wiped out, except theirs, is a little unnerving. And the fact that they left a program or something on there that is hidden, that's even more unnerving.
I would probably recover the machine, like you are contemplating. If it came with Windows 10 and has an embedded product key, or it had been upgraded to Windows 10 during the free upgrade period and activated with a digital license tied to the computer, I would even contemplate performing a clean install from a user created Windows 10 ISO, but that, of course, would wipe out the recovery partition, and if no recovery disks were written from that partition, it would be gone, forever. I'm not a fan of recovery partitions, though they can be useful. I'm only thinking of the possibility of the recovery partition having been messed with by that company.
If it came with Windows 8 or 8.1 and an embedded product key, you can do a clean install from a user created Windows 8.1 ISO, as well. I did that with my Acer.
Recovery completed. Upgrading to Windows 10 downloading now. Oh my data is going to take a hit this month. Guess I will eat into my tokens.
After following this thread, I share your concerns.
I would do a clean install just to be sure.
If you download the ISO and have issues with activation PM me or email me (I suppose you still have it).
I've gone to running my Win10 as a VM using OracleVM as the hypervisor on a Solaris11 base.
Running a VM allows the use of "snapshot" to restore the OS to a previous time.
Your hardware is also protected since the HDD is actually only a file rather than access to your physical drive.
Hoping the best 4 u
Don :)
