Is my problem bad enough to be taken to a service/repair shop?

[fosho14]

My computer got severely hacked into by ppl with malicious and criminal intent. They shut down my antivirus program and changed my ip address (it's a very long story but basically I was a victim of a scam over the phone). Luckily I was able to remove the keyloggers and spyware/password savers that were detected by performing a full scan using malware bytes. After those were quarantined and deleted my computer was for the most part back to full working order with my antivirus program coming back to life. After further performing check ups through my vipre antivrus and tune up utilities software it appears as though my computer is fine on the surface, but I obviously want to have that piece of mind and security knowing that there are no hidden viruses/malware deep within the system that were not discovered.

****The reason I say this is because multiple different knowledgeable and savvy technicians and computer experts that I've talked to have said that there are all sorts of keylog/rootkit and other harmful forms of bugs and malware that cannot be detected by the average antivirus/malware removal program. However apparently when you take in your computer to a repair business the technicians are able to inspect and clean much deeper because they use a variety of different tools and sophisticated methods to search the computer for problems. Is this true? I would really like the piece of mind knowing that my computer is completely free of the garbage that infested it, so I should probably pay to get it professionally inspected right? I mean were talking about a lot of personal information at stake including banking details and everything!

[thisisu]

Welcome to Major Geeks, fosho14

Originally Posted by fosho14

However apparently when you take in your computer to a repair business the technicians are able to inspect and clean much deeper because they use a variety of different tools and sophisticated methods to search the computer for problems. Is this true?

I would say this really depends on the intelligence of the technician working on your computer. They should know what to do but I cannot say that every computer technician will. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

Originally Posted by fosho14

I mean were talking about a lot of personal information at stake including banking details and everything!

None of our tools/scans we have you do here will reveal any type of financial information. We are strictly looking for malware and we're very good at it

Originally Posted by fosho14

I would really like the piece of mind knowing that my computer is completely free of the garbage that infested it, so I should probably pay to get it professionally inspected right?

Your call. You should feel comfortable and confident in the person working on your computer.

Here is the malware removal guide at this site: READ & RUN ME FIRST Malware Removal Guide

[fosho14]

Thanks for the reply. Ya as I mentioned earlier on the surface, the computer looks and runs fine as I removed all the malware/spyware myself and ran antivirus scans. My question was more asking if you know of the techniques or resources that repair stores use or are they just trying to get my business by saying "we have the tools to remove hidden malware that you don't have" (when really they're just going to run similar removal programs). I'm wondering if it's worth the cost. With all my personal information already being infiltrated, I really don't want to take any chances but at the same time I hate paying for nothing!

Any responses, opinions and thoughts are greatly appreciated!

[chaslang]

The tools we use here are at least if not more comprehensive as anything done in a repair ship. And in most cases, since we are really malware experts, we are better at finding things then computer repair shops. Our manual inspection of the information in the logs we collect, allows us to find things that commerical protection software typically miss.

As thisisu stated about repair shops, it really depends on the personel and their training, however, they cannot afford to spend the amount of time that we do. They would have to charge you more than $400 to $500 to which most people would realize it is cheaper to purchase a new PC.

If however you require a 100% guarantee that your computer is clean, then you have to delete everything on your computer including all partitions, and then format and reinstall from scratch. And in addition, you should not restore anything that you have made from backs. This is the only 100% way to know a PC is clean. Or you could purchase a new PC as mentioned above. And if you want it to stay this way, you should never connect it to the internet and you should never plug any external devices ( like USB drives ) into it that were used elsewhere. Now all this being said, it most cases, this extreme methodology is not required, but I hope you see my point in expanding upon the idea of saying a PC is 100% clean.

[fosho14]

Thanks for your input chaslang. Based on my situation what would you recommend without reformatting and reinstalling windows from scratch again. (I don't have an external hard drive and have over 500 gb of media that I would hate to lose). What is my best course of action?

also keep in mind that malware bytes has been performed and cleaned everything, along with my anti-virus, so currently there are no problems visible. I'm wondering what I should do for the piece of mind, knowing that there aren't any hidden teardropped bugs that are still ingrained and deep-rooted in my system that just haven't been detected yet.

Cheers

[fosho14]

The only reason I'm being this paranoid is because I know for a fact that these hackers got in. So even though I removed the malware for the most part it's not outside the realm of possibility that something was infected and installed deep and hidden that I can't get to with conventional malware/anti-virus software. I've changed all my banking cards and passwords and email passwords so I don't want to have gone through all that work for nothing, if some kind of password tracker or keylogger is still hiding deep within my system. This is why I want to be confident and rest assured that everything is safe before I start online banking with my new account numbers and passwords, because I obviously don't want all this new/changed information tracked as well.

Hope that makes sense

[chaslang]

Originally Posted by fosho14

Based on my situation what would you recommend without reformatting and reinstalling windows from scratch again.

Please follow the instructions in the below link:

READ & RUN ME FIRST. Malware Removal Guide