I have an old Acer 270 netbook that's picked up this malware. If I let it boot normally, then it basically locks me out with all its bogus warnings and scans then if I try to Crtl-Alt-Del at any point it tells me that function has been disabled by my 'administrator.'
I can't get it to boot up in any of the Safe modes either or to the last good setup - it just stops. It's completely unoperational whether I let it start or try to intervene during bootup.
Thing is, there's no data on the computer I care about ( I just use it for the 'net when I travel) and I haven't used any antivirus software because it's one of the original books with just an 8g solid state drive in it and a slow processor and antivirus software pretty much kills it....
Thing is - if I can't remove the malware, then is it possible to just reinstall Windows? I have the original disks but I would have to find an external disk drive presumably, but I don't know how to reinstall using an external drive. Alternatively, I was thinking about Ubuntu using a flashdrive?
Or should I just use it as a doorstop and buy a more modern netbook?
I can't get it to boot up in any of the Safe modes either or to the last good setup - it just stops. It's completely unoperational whether I let it start or try to intervene during bootup.
Thing is, there's no data on the computer I care about ( I just use it for the 'net when I travel) and I haven't used any antivirus software because it's one of the original books with just an 8g solid state drive in it and a slow processor and antivirus software pretty much kills it....
Thing is - if I can't remove the malware, then is it possible to just reinstall Windows? I have the original disks but I would have to find an external disk drive presumably, but I don't know how to reinstall using an external drive. Alternatively, I was thinking about Ubuntu using a flashdrive?
Or should I just use it as a doorstop and buy a more modern netbook?