While we are talking about viruses, I guess it is time to put my Windows 7 PC permanently offline, to be used only as an offline gaming system for older Windows games that may have issues in Windows 10 etc. I already have done the same years ago to couple of my Windows XP machines.
Reason being that since there has been those "CPU spike" issues on that machine, I decided to run a virus scanner on it, booting that machine to Linux instead and running the ClamAV (the open source virus scanner, also available for Linux, apparently mainly used for looking for Windows viruses in mail relays and Windows partitions) on the two 2TB Windows partitions on that PC.
It has reported quite many positives so far, in files like minesweeper.exe etc. Just to make sure they are not false positives, I guess I will also boot and use a Kaspersky Rescue Disc to rescan it another time, to get another opinion. And maybe also check some of those allegedly infected files on Virustotal.com.
God damn it. Even though I left that machine online, I've tried to be careful with it, not going to any hazy web sites, only ones I trust (including gog.com), and not installing e.g. any pirated software on it that might contain malware.
I had disabled the Avira virus scanner on it like half a year ago or so because it caused me some problems (the Windows boot would take awfully long with Avira, and there was no simple way to disable it for hours or more, if needed, as I hated how it tends to just quarantine even false positives without asking me what to do, and if I try to disable it, it will enable itself automatically after awhile).
Yeah, so it may be some malware may have still gotten to the system. Probably from some web site then, I can't think of what software I've installed on it would have infected it...
Putting it offline also means that I will not apparently play Steam games on it anymore, only GOG games (using offline installers) and other older games with installers. That laptop will go online only with Linux from now on, the same as with those older Windows XP PCs.
Post edited September 08, 2021 by timppu