My dads pc is full of fake virus protection pop ups, the sort he then clicks on - protect the computer and makes it worse

Anyway was going to restore it to factory, but I tried to type in recovery in the search bar in the start screen and it wont recognise the word recovery.
Is a virus blocking me from trying to do this

 

Get a seperate dongle and put these 2 programmes on...

http://www.free-av.com/

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

Thats what was suggested by danneth when I had the same problem.

 

No you won't, the actual application you are looking for is "System Restore" although those fake AV arn't to hard to remove but you need to know what your doing.

As said try Malware Bytes, and what A/V is it running, as in the actual legite one?

Martin

 

You can get into the recovery console by hitting f8 upon startup and then selecting recovery from the list.

But ideally you want to try and clean it up before going down that route. That said malware/spyware once they take hold they dig their way right in and cant be near on impossible to remove completely.

 

Thank you very much guys, i'll try those on a dongle!
The f8 rang a bell, I did that on my lap top but it was f2 / f12. I tried on the pc and it was the same, but i cant remember what to do???
I think I might actually just wipe the lot because its been playing up for a while and I have saved everything from it.

 

'Recovery' and system restore and two totally and very different things! 'Recovery' will NOT help you, it has things like command prompt, startup repair etc, it is typically used to repair MBR etc if corrupt and the system won't boot or other advanced tasks.

System restore however will do as the name suggests and restore your PC from a restore point, if you choose one before the problem happened you may be able to sort it.

F8 takes you into the windows startup enviroment where you can choose safe mode, safe mode with networking etc, Last good known configuration!

F2 and F10 will take you into the BIOS, something you don't want to be in unless your competent enough to do so!

Martin

 

just reboot with windows 7, vista is rubbish anyway.

 

Fuck that, just wipe it and reload starting again with a clean install.

 

You are talking about the recovery console, I was talking about the repair my pc option from the F8/F12 advanced boot options. Most manufacturers create a "hidden" partition which contains a base image of the original installation.. once access this will run you through restoring it completely.
This will wipe all of your data and additionally installed software.

 

Oh sorry mate see where your coming from, misunderstood you

Martin

 

System Restore should fix this AFTER an Anti Virus/Malware clean up

Ive done into double figures of these in the last couple of months