SEC=UGA Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 On Monday one of my purchasing agents came into my office and told me that her computer was "fried" it wouldn't come on. Called our IT guy, he said it might be the power supply due to us plugging it in and the light on the back flashing in a certain manner. We went and bought a new power supply installed it. COmputer still wouldn't come on, had to be the mother board he says. So we take it to him to look at. Diagnostics are run, mother board appears good, power supply good... Operating system is missing... So he goes to try and pull everything off the hard drive before installing the new OS. There were only 8 files on there with extensions that we had no clue what they were. Nothing on the HD except these 8 "unknown" files. So he wipes it and installs the new OS and computer works fine. He stated he had never seen anything like this... Any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddahj Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 pron??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEC=UGA Posted September 14, 2012 Author Share Posted September 14, 2012 pron??? I said nothing about this being my computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tazinib1 Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 Sounds like you got what I got on my laptop. Trojan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennykravitz2004 Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 On Monday one of my purchasing agents came into my office and told me that her computer was "fried" it wouldn't come on. Called our IT guy, he said it might be the power supply due to us plugging it in and the light on the back flashing in a certain manner. We went and bought a new power supply installed it. COmputer still wouldn't come on, had to be the mother board he says. So we take it to him to look at. Diagnostics are run, mother board appears good, power supply good... Operating system is missing... So he goes to try and pull everything off the hard drive before installing the new OS. There were only 8 files on there with extensions that we had no clue what they were. Nothing on the HD except these 8 "unknown" files. So he wipes it and installs the new OS and computer works fine. He stated he had never seen anything like this... Any ideas? What do Google results turn up about the names of 8 "unknown files"? At first blush, virus/trojan. Many don't just take info from you, they also find a way to wipe your entire HDD. Could also have a bad HDD. But that would usually be indicated by a 500GB HDD showing only as 300GB (or something along those lines indicating bad/lost sectors). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billay Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 Was it a new computer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEC=UGA Posted September 14, 2012 Author Share Posted September 14, 2012 Was it a new computer? 3 YO. How does a computer lose it's OS, all the files on the HD, except for a few that, well, had really nothing in them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delusions of grandeur Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 What do Google results turn up about the names of 8 "unknown files"? At first blush, virus/trojan. Many don't just take info from you, they also find a way to wipe your entire HDD. Could also have a bad HDD. But that would usually be indicated by a 500GB HDD showing only as 300GB (or something along those lines indicating bad/lost sectors). This. My first inclination would have also been power supply or motherboard, as I've had to replace both before. If your OS was missing, then by far the most likely possibility is you had a virus. But when he reinstalled windows it reformats the HD, erasing everything so you should be good now. I actually have 2 other internal HDs installed so that I can do the same when my computer starts running slow without having to wipe out any of my data (just have to reinstall my programs). In fact, I could have told you that as soon as your monitor came on that it wasn't the motherboard being fried. He wouldn't have even been able to reinstall windows if that was the case. Do you still have concerns? Because if you're not having hardware or any other issues, you should be good to go... Though you could play it safe by buying a new HD, jsut in case it was hard drive failure (though I'm not sure that seems very likely. It usually creates other errors or stops working completely and can't be repaired). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cliaz Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 Any ideas? liberals tea party iRash conservatives metric system obamacare WDIS threads Housing market rate my team threads Atheists illegal immigrates christmas Loaf central banks occupy wall street EPA Catholics muslims stevegrab mexicans jehovah witnesses I dunno, I give up But more than likely it sounds like someone got in to your network, mapped a network drive, probably copied out a bunch of data and then wiped the OS/files leaving behind those 8 files left from their hack tools. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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