- Joined
- Mar 13, 2005
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An acquaintance from church asked me to perform my computer tuneup on his HP Pavilion laptop after he realized the heavily accented caller on the phone wasn't really from Microsoft. The caller had maneuvered him into installing GoToAssist which includes unattended remote access. I took off GoToAssist, ran Adwcleaner and Junkware Removal Tool (both available from bleepingcomputer.com). Adwcleaner rightly reported PCKeeper as a PUP (potentially unwanted program) which I removed.
The computer was still agonizingly slow, so I checked Task Manager for rogue services and processes but found none. Instead, the Memory tab reported less than 1GB of RAM. The computer Properties reported 6GB of installed RAM but the same paltry amount of usable RAM.
A boot into Safe Mode (what a pain on Windows 8) reported the same numbers. I shut down the laptop, opened the back and pulled and reseated the RAM.
And there it was, all 6GB installed minus the 128MB for the Intel integrated graphics.
And now, for the $64,000 grand prize:
Can a fake PC tech plant code that stays in RAM as long as the RAM sticks are in their slots or was this just a hardware fluke?
What say you, world?
The computer was still agonizingly slow, so I checked Task Manager for rogue services and processes but found none. Instead, the Memory tab reported less than 1GB of RAM. The computer Properties reported 6GB of installed RAM but the same paltry amount of usable RAM.
A boot into Safe Mode (what a pain on Windows 8) reported the same numbers. I shut down the laptop, opened the back and pulled and reseated the RAM.
And there it was, all 6GB installed minus the 128MB for the Intel integrated graphics.
And now, for the $64,000 grand prize:
Can a fake PC tech plant code that stays in RAM as long as the RAM sticks are in their slots or was this just a hardware fluke?
What say you, world?