friend victim of scam

bdogg said:

Thanks to all for your quick recommendations. Now to work on the solutions. Thanks again

Which route will you go? Repair or clean install?

Sounds like a good plan.

When he has a clean and working system... maybe it's time to make system image?

bdogg said:

I'll take a chance on my machine. Didn't find anything untoward on my friends. i would reset the router to factory, but he lives about a hundred miles away and has difficulty with my instructions for resetting it. working on that. otherwise working on a clean install on his machine. need to reinstall all the programs and restore the saved data.
thanks again

AndreTen said:

Sounds like a good plan.

When he has a clean and working system... maybe it's time to make system image?

Excellent! When you get to the clean install, you should delete all partitions during the first part of it, not just install into the same partition. That will ensure you start with a totally empty 1 big partition to install to, and let Windows create what it needs.

And agree on the image backup. It's a lifesaver.

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

bdogg said:

Have to get him to go out and buy a USB hard drive for that. Thanks for reminding me.

Best of luck. Keep us updated, please.

f14tomcat said:

Best of luck. Keep us updated, please.

Sorry to hear this happened to your friend, and glad you caught it. I agree with the others: clean install, wipe all partitions, reset the router if you can and re-install the firmware in it too (I know this is difficult from 100 miles away...). Most definitely get Macrium Reflect Free on there once it's all back up and running and make regular images - it'll be easier to restore an image than go through this again. It will also help if the hard drive ever unexpectedly dies and needs to be replaced.