I think my Dell Laptop (Vista Home Premium SP2) has been hijacked. This probably occurred some time ago - the hints were 1) a clean install of Windows 7 Pro took up 42G (instead of the 16G I've heard it normally needs); 2) whenever rebooting or powering on the screen blinks on and off twice; 3) occasionally the computer's clock will be an hour off; 4) my wife's social security # was stolen; 5) yahoo email notes disappeared from folders until I changed the password; 6) personal email notes were intercepted and made public. Unbelievably (and stupidly), I ignored these until seeing the alarming disk space usage by Windows 7. In hindsight it's pretty clear.
Doesn't a clean OS install eliminate hijackers settings, etc, essentially reverting the machine to a clean status? If not, what are the next steps? I can install Windows 7 Pro again - maybe I need to delete ALL the partitions, instead of leaving the "factory settings" partition alone?
Yikes!
Doesn't a clean OS install eliminate hijackers settings, etc, essentially reverting the machine to a clean status? If not, what are the next steps? I can install Windows 7 Pro again - maybe I need to delete ALL the partitions, instead of leaving the "factory settings" partition alone?
Yikes!
