#computering

Alright kittens, I’m in the market for a new laptop.  The Asus I bought a few years ago just had a swollen-battery issue and now it’s warped as hell.

So what laptops do you all recommend?  What do you love?  What can’t you live without?

things the malware did:

☣️ ads everywhere, until the computer crashed

☣️ made windows fail to boot

☣️ (once i was able to boot windows) prevented antivirus programs from running or being installed

☣️ prevented windows system restore from running

☣️ prevented CCleaner from running

☣️ changed the hosts file so that trying to load safe websites instead loaded malicious websites

☣️ probably tried to steal personal data but the person who was logged in at the time didn’t have any on this computer

here is a partial list of the things i did:

⚕️ ran Avira’s rescue boot CD once (it froze on a certain problem file so i had to use different tactics)

⚕️ ran AVG’s rescue boot CD until the scans came back clean

⚕️ ran Emisoft Emergency Kit until scans were clean

⚕️ ran Malwarebytes until the scans came back clean

⚕️ ran Avast until the scans came back clean

⚕️ ran HitmanPro to remove browser hijacks

⚕️ ran CCleaner to delete a bunch of crap

⚕️ ran Process Explorer and Autoruns to remove the autorun prompts for the malware that were still there after the malware was gone, and to confirm that the computer is now clean

I won't spread this because I don't like that. But I will reply:

1. The bug I found after hours of work and false starts

2. The incidental side bug that resulted in "File not found" even though I thought it wouldn't load a file. Turns out it opened the file before determining it shouldn't be loaded.

3. Another unrelated bug in the poor woman's debugging build

4. Same bug in more places