Please do not run any programs, or make any changes to your computer, without asking me first! This will make it practically impossible for me to help you.

As such, here are some very important things I need you to remember:

Your cooperation will be absolutely vital if we're going to fix your computer. Hi, MalusCalibur! I'm going to do my best to help you out. What is the best course of action from here? I desperately need my computer for my work and cannot afford to format the hard drive (as there are imortant files not yet backed up) unless it is the only solution.Įdited by MalusCalibur, 16 April 2020 - 06:36 PM. As such, I'm rather stuck without the infected machine until I can be sure of taking curative measures without worsening the situation. This was enough for me to shut the computer down entirely for fear of making the situation worse, and I did some research into the matter.Īs it turns out, I found a PSA on Reddit almost immediately warning of this very program containing some kind of virus ( ), as well as providing details of its nature on the website VirusTotal ( ). Upon logging back in to Windows, I found that Firefox would not load any webpages besides the DuckDuckGo home page (and that only after considerable delay), and while minor programs (Notepad, Calculator etc) worked normally neither Malwarebytes nor AVG would start (the former with no visible effect, the latter would attempt to open the UI but produced an error message), and programs would occasionaly be closed automatically without warning. I enacted a scan with Malwarebytes which produced a couple of quarantined items - I deleted these within the program and, thinking that would be the end of the matter, restarted my computer. While the program itself was once a legitimate offering, and the website offered no cause for concern, there were immediate anomalies.During the installation process I received a warning from my antivirus (AVG) which I took as serious enough to immediately cancel said process and delete the offending installer - however, I suspect that by this stage it was too late.įrom there, I began to receive regular pop-up warnings from AVG saying that attempts to connect to a URL (the content of which seemed likely, based on the name, to be pornographic) were being blocked, alongside less regular warnings from Malwarebytes about 'riskware', but otherwise no ill effect.

When trying to replace XPadder on my current computer (which no longer functions in Windows 10), I downloaded a program called Pinnacle Game Profiler.

Pinnacle profiler crash