When was the last time you dealt with a Computer Virus?

[JuanMena]

I'm someone who has backups of my stuff uploaded to a cloud service. I even have backups of those backups stored on my lap, and at the same time, more backups on my External Hard Drive.
Today, I had to download a file from my cloud and I noticed the legend: "Searching for viruses before downloading" and I realized that I haven't had to deal with one in a very, very long time.

Not talking about years... no... I'm talking about probably a decade ago. Really!
The last time I had to deal with a virus was when I had a Desktop PC, and got infected with the virus that duplicates the trash bin and won't let you delete stuff.
I certainly don't remember much as that happened in 2011 or so. Of course, my PC died some days after that. So it had to get fixed.

Then, in 2014, I dealt with the Artemis one, but this wasn't mine, it was on my aunt's laptop, and I (again) can't remember if I succesfully got rid of it or not.

I'm curious, as always...
Do you have a similar story?
Have you scanned your system for one lately?
What's your favourite Software to remove viruses?
When was the last time you dealt with a virus? Where you able to get rid of it?

 

[dragonblood9999]

I think the last time I dealt with a virus that would really do anything was , I think, 2011. I literally just got the computer and my service provider was giving a free copy of McAfee anti-virus internet security. Well literally a day later the pc had got ransomware.

Thankfully it was the kind that wouldn't run in safe mode. I was able to uninstall McAfee, install a better AV and run malwarebytes to remove the Randomware.

The funny thing was I literally didn't do anything on the PC the day I got it, just setting up windows.

Sent from my SM-G975W using Tapatalk

 

[Deleted User]

a few years ago when i installed pirated Nero i got like 6 or 7 viruses, ironically it was this incident what made me decide to stop using an antivirus as the one time i needed Avast it did not work, so it was just bloat

 

[Chary]

Ugh. It was when my boyfriend was visiting and needed to use my PC to run Nox emulator for his mobile MMO. He installed it, and suddenly there were ad redirects, weird toolbars, page hijacks, BSODs...a mess. Had to nuke the whole installation. I had no idea it had one of those scumbag “lol uncheck this box if u don’t want your pc ruined”

 

[JuanMena]

Ugh. It was when my boyfriend was visiting and needed to use my PC to run Nox emulator for his mobile MMO. He installed it, and suddenly there were ad redirects, weird toolbars, page hijacks, BSODs...a mess. Had to nuke the whole installation. I had no idea it had one of those scumbag “lol uncheck this box if u don’t want your pc ruined”

Kidz and their MMO's

 

[GoldenBullet]

I have been getting a virus that infects chrome extensions and causes redirects when you click a google search result. Seems like just harmless adware but it still is very annoying. It kept coming back and is actually the reason I am using the Edge browser now. Not a bad browser at all actually and the virus has yet to come back

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Thinking on it, I don't think I've ever personally had a legit computer virus, worm, malware, etc etc I was never necessarily overly careful, I just didn't do obviously stupid stuff and so haven't had any issues in the many years I've spent using the internet.

Pretty much still the case from the last time this thread idea was posted, though I do tend to be a bit more careful in that anything I install that looks any kind of fishy usually gets run in a throwaway Windows VM I have on my server. So far no infections on that either, so I guess I'm just immune at this point

 

[Deleted User]

It was three years ago, in the middle of my annual Windows reinstall, which is needed to keep intensive 3D Design Software running properly; who would've thought that a specific order of Software installation is needed to keep conflicts between them, but apparently it is.

In this one Windows installation, I accessed the Internet faster than usual, as I was pressed for time.
Ransomware came through and encrypted a good chunk of my data.

I ran some Security Software to delete the existing Ransomware and all the encrypted data; luckily I could live without them.
Lesson learnt.

 

[Hells Malice]

Like 5 years ago I got lazy and downloaded KMS pico from a bad source. That went south real fast.
You pretty much have to intentionally download viruses these days on PC. Everyone moved to mobile.

Ugh. It was when my boyfriend was visiting and needed to use my PC to run Nox emulator for his mobile MMO. He installed it, and suddenly there were ad redirects, weird toolbars, page hijacks, BSODs...a mess. Had to nuke the whole installation. I had no idea it had one of those scumbag “lol uncheck this box if u don’t want your pc ruined”

It was a really tiny checkbox pls who expected me to read

 

[Deleted member 397813]

mostly being a bootleg danooct01 and experimenting with dos and win9x viruses... my last virus on a vm was Chernobyl. My last one on actual hardware was wannacry. lucky for me, a bunch of my important files were already in the cloud, so i could just run a windows 10 installation usb again.

 

[Crazynoob458]

some time ago i decided to run memz virus for shits and giggles becuase i knew on how to fix it i just use the recovery tools to fix my pc

 

[GanjiMEX]

A few weeks ago I had to deal with Virut-A on my laptop, thankfully I had AVG's deleter thing after downloading it from my phone and it saved my portable grill (laptop). Also I have the svchost.exe thing on my PC, not sure how to do destroy it, also i'm about 100% that only affects USB drives connected in my PC and I'm not the kind of person that constantly changes OS and stuff

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Reminds me of this thread about "first" virus:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/if-you-ever-had-an-first-computer-virus.547279/

I've had two contacts with computer malware:

• In the 1990s a DOS malware (was called Antiexe). I think a TSR bootsector virus. Had fun checking and cleaning all my floppies (100+) when I finally noticed the mess. Did not infect files like classic viruses.
  
• In the early 2000s Sasser or Blaster worm. These things that spread like dandelions from unprotected Win2000 and WinXP installations

About 2005/2006 I went more or less completely Linux and only have seen malware on Windows computers that were brought to me because of infection since.
===========

Don't know if this counts as it was anti-malware (McAfee) that acted like malware

On April 21, 2010, beginning at approximately 14:00 UTC, millions of computers worldwide running Windows XP Service Pack 3 were affected by an erroneous virus definition file update by McAfee, resulting in the removal of a Windows system file (svchost.exe) on those machines, causing machines to lose network access and, in some cases, enter a reboot loop

That was some at the university I had to help repairing.

 

[DinohScene]

Years ago, that's what I remember.

Only reason I'm running a AV is due to laziness.

 

[tech3475]

Dealing with backups of other peoples files recently.

Seriously, if you deal with other peoples data, make sure to have an AV installed as this has been my biggest source of malware.

 

[IC_]

2 days ago when I got a new laptop, it had Windows 7 installed on it. The windows installation hated me so much that the entire system broke and was showing a blue screen while booting only after I cleaned the computer from the inside. I erased the hard drive with a badblocks test later, and the hard drive is working without any issues, so it couldn't have been the fault of an old dying hard drive.

 

[Flame]

too long. considering my main setup is Linux Mint. but i do dualboot with windows.

i sometimes think what if i have a virus but its so advanced that nothing can detect it. then i open Google Chrome.

 

[leon315]

When i bought a notebook and it had Windows VISTA, absolutely the worst OS ever, later moved to LINUX and i was clean for years

 

[Medveitsi]

about 5 years ago when my friend installed tinder to my PC

 

[leon315]

Plus if you have auto-backup, won't this feature upload infected files onto cloud, then eventually affects new pc when you download them back???