Hey everyone, I'm in the process of building a new PC and I recently got a Samsung 900 Pro SSD, which has 2 Terabytes of space. However, after activating Windows 11 Pro with a key I purchased online for about €2, I noticed that my SSD was suddenly full just 2-3 days later. It showed that the temporary storage was maxed out. I'm a bit paranoid and worried that I might've caught a virus from that email, even though I only clicked on the activation code to copy it. I have Norton for Gamers set up, and when I ran a virus scan, it didn't find anything suspicious.
My Windows installation was quite fresh, so I'm wondering if this is some sort of Windows bug or if it could actually be malware that's causing this issue. I've already freaked out and replaced a whole bunch of components like the graphics card, RAM, and motherboard, but I didn't swap out my processor or fans. Can viruses spread to those components? Also, I forgot to change my Razer Basilisk mouse, which I used during the 2TB issue. Could a virus be hiding there and infecting my new hardware? Any thoughts?
1 Answer
It's really unlikely that just activating Windows with a key could lead to any malware infection. Malware typically spreads through downloading files or clicking on suspicious links, not just entering a key. As for your fears about whether a virus could spread to your CPU or fans, that's not a concern; they can't get infected that way. Since you’ve already secure erased your SSD and it came up clean, I’d say there’s a good chance it wasn’t malware after all.
Yeah, that’s what I thought too. But could the email itself be the problem? I'm so confused.