Coming back from the holiday, my computer was sick. No, did not download anything, just simple web surfing, by myself and family members who are all computer savvy.
It became sluggish, extremely. It froze at random time. When it unfroze, my browser would take over the screen and displayed a porn site, a survey, a sales page for spyware removal services (free scanning), or just a blank page.
I tried everything — killing unwanted processes, edit the start-up scripts, scan with a known good spyware scanner, etc. — to naught. I slugged on and managed to back up everything I can think of. Then I surrendered it to Juniper IT.
It was a spyware called vundo or MS Juan. It is nasty and clearly difficult to eradicate. IT gave me a new disk with fresh Windows installed. It took me days to restore everything.
What’s the lesson? When this computer expires in a year or so, I am switching to Linux! Good riddance, MSFT.
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