A friend of mine has run into a serious issue with her Windows 10 PC. She got scammed, and now when she tries to log in, she gets this fake screen saying her computer is locked and to call Microsoft. I believe she only has one user account on the machine. I attempted a system restore, but the only available restore points are from when she first interacted with the scammer. I'm worried that won't really help. The restore seemed to be taking a long time, and I'm not sure what the best next steps are. If the restore fails, I'm considering removing the hard drive to recover her files and then doing a clean install of Windows. What do you all suggest?
2 Answers
I wouldn’t mess around with anything besides disconnecting the computer from the internet. Once that’s done, get any important files off it, wipe the drives, and reinstall Windows. Plus, once everything’s clean, change all passwords and enable 2FA using an app on a mobile device—SMS or email isn’t the best option. Security tokens like Google Titan or Yubikeys are great for 2FA, just in case!
Honestly, if I were in your shoes, I’d just reinstall Windows from scratch. It’s really not worth the risk of trying to get it back to normal since the system might still be compromised. Just wipe everything and start fresh!
Good to know! The computer is actually already disconnected, and it seems the scammer didn’t access any accounts or change passwords.