Advice needed on BSOD Scam!

[lovemountains]

Suddenly on our other computer there was a bright blue screen accompanied by a loud beeping that sounded like a timer. A message said "BSOD: Register Server Failed with an error code....." and also said that my Microsoft computer is blocked! It told me to call a number immediately and "certified Microsoft technicians" would unblock my computer. I suspected it was a scam, and there seemed to be no way to get out of it, so I immediately turned the computer off.

I did a search (with the laptop I'm typing on now) and found that it is a scam as I suspected. There were some solutions suggested to get rid of the virus, but I have to be able to turn on the computer and use it to follow those directions.

It's a Lenova desktop that we purchased less than 3 months ago with Windows 10 already installed.

What can I do? I'd appreciate your help! Thanks

[Gdetrailer]

Gene&Ginny wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:
...

For Pete's sake.. The OP has ALREADY SAID it blue screens when booting the OS......

Booting in safe mode occurs after reading the BIOS and before the full Windows boot. Safe mode only loads a fragment of the full OS. Many times that will allow some recovery unless the entire disk became encripted. That was the reason for asking if the OP could get to safe mode.

Umm.. NO, not correct.

NT based systems LOAD EVERY NEEDED DRIVER INTO MEMORY (IE "basic" drivers). This happens BEFORE the GUI loads (Graphical User Interface or "desktop").

"Safe mode" is nothing more than booting to a basic set of Windows drivers, WITH A GUI.. The problem is with Malware can easily REPLACE the GUI with a FAKED "blue screen of death".

From Win "ME" and up, you can not even load a "DOS prompt" without having to LOAD ALL the basic windows drivers from that hard drive..

The reason? Simple, DOS does not recognize a NTFS partition!

XP with a little playing around you COULD get it to install to a FAT32 (DOS recognizable) partition.. Win7 and up you cannot force to install to FAT32.

The ONLY way to fix the OPs PC is to BOOT from another BOOTABLE source like the Windows recovery DVD, Bart PE, Linux or another PC..

Windows Recovery DVD uses what is called a Preinstallation Boot Environment (AKA "PE"), this IS the only way you can access the drive without having the malware run.

PE is the NT version of DOS (Command line access).

Barts PE is a little nicer to work with since it adds a GUI to the mix.

You cannot and will not be able to fix via Safe mode because the HACKERS are smart enough to BLOCK SAFE MODE.

[hawkeye-08]

road-runner wrote:

Jagtech wrote:
Give this guy a call, he can help.....

Funniest picture I've seen in a long time. Once again, truth is stranger than fiction.

I don't even have to call him, he reliably calls me a couple times a month. He's able to detect that something bad is wrong with my system, and he's right there offering to fix it.

My guy is better than yours, he/she calls several times per week. My latest reply was, "I am a pig farmer, I don't have a computer". Before that, I insisted on them giving me a credit card number so I can bill my time.

[road-runner]

Jagtech wrote:
Give this guy a call, he can help.....

Funniest picture I've seen in a long time. Once again, truth is stranger than fiction.

I don't even have to call him, he reliably calls me a couple times a month. He's able to detect that something bad is wrong with my system, and he's right there offering to fix it.

[Jagtech]

Give this guy a call, he can help.....

[Gene_Ginny]

Gdetrailer wrote:
...

For Pete's sake.. The OP has ALREADY SAID it blue screens when booting the OS......

Booting in safe mode occurs after reading the BIOS and before the full Windows boot. Safe mode only loads a fragment of the full OS. Many times that will allow some recovery unless the entire disk became encripted. That was the reason for asking if the OP could get to safe mode.

[Gdetrailer]

austinjenna wrote:
Boot it into safe mode,download malwarebytes from your other computer and put it on a usb drive, then plug that into the infected computer and run it. It should find the virus.

For Pete's sake.. The OP has ALREADY SAID it blue screens when booting the OS..

Malware and Virus writers ARE a lot smarter than you think, they can easily disable Safe mode..

OP will NEED to use a WINDOWS RECOVERY BOOT DVD and even then may not be successful depending on the damage the Malware has done.

Alternate to the WINDOWS RECOVERY BOOT DVD would be to boot the PC to a "PE" (Pre Boot) OS environment (Bart's PE or even Linux) then run anti malware/antivirus software.

Second alternate (this one could be risky and could spread the malware to your good PC) is to remove the HD from the PC, use a external USB to HD adapter to plug into a good PC. You would boot the good PC to the desktop then plug the offending HD into to PC using the external USB to HD adapter. Then run the anti malware and anti virus software to clean up the drive.

If nothing else works, nuke the drive and reinstall the OS from scratch..

Once you get it fixed, consider getting some imaging software and an external HD and make backup images of your PC.. Go through this one time and you WILL appreciate having your PC OS backed up in the future..

[1492]

strollin wrote:

Trackrig wrote:
Sorry about your problem, but I had to laugh at Microsoft - I read one of their adds the other day that said their virus prtection was so good that you didn't need to use anything else. It didn't take people long to get around it. Let MS know what you think of their protection when you talk to them.

Bill

I use MSE on my Win 7 computer and Windows Defender on my Win 8.1 and Win 10 computers. Does the job for me. IMO, nothing more is needed provided you use some common sense in knowing what to click on and what not to click on when surfing the web.

Unfortunately, Windows MSE, now Defender is considered baseline protection by leading AV security organizations. Which essentially means it consistently rates at the bottom of list for protection, to which other security apps are compared.

You're much better off getting the Free Bitdefender, AVG Free, or Avast Free.

[joebedford]

vjstangelo wrote:
Did you create a system image and a recovery disk? If yes, boot from the recovery disk, and you should get an option to restore the operating system from an image. What you are doing is writing over the corrupted hard drive (and the virus which has taken over your system) with the saved image that does not have the virus.

X2

Some of these things actually encrypt the hard drive and there is essentially no foolproof way to recover. Since it's a new computer, hopefully you won't lose too much if you have to go back to square zero - i.e. reformat and reload OS.

[austinjenna]

Boot it into safe mode,download malwarebytes from your other computer and put it on a usb drive, then plug that into the infected computer and run it. It should find the virus.

[Gene_Ginny]

lovemountains wrote:
... it immediately pops up again when I start the computer, and blocks me from doing anything.

That eliminates ideas like changing browsers.

Can you get it to boot into "safe mode"?

[Executive45]

And stay off the porn sites...j/k...:B:B:B:B.....Dennis

[strollin]

Trackrig wrote:
Sorry about your problem, but I had to laugh at Microsoft - I read one of their adds the other day that said their virus prtection was so good that you didn't need to use anything else. It didn't take people long to get around it. Let MS know what you think of their protection when you talk to them.

Bill

I use MSE on my Win 7 computer and Windows Defender on my Win 8.1 and Win 10 computers. Does the job for me. IMO, nothing more is needed provided you use some common sense in knowing what to click on and what not to click on when surfing the web.

[Rainier]

Try using a different browser - I like Chrome.

Remove all internet data (cache, cookies, history, etc) in the browser that the pop up has been on to see if it goes away.

[vjstangelo]

Did you create a system image and a recovery disk? If yes, boot from the recovery disk, and you should get an option to restore the operating system from an image. What you are doing is writing over the corrupted hard drive (and the virus which has taken over your system) with the saved image that does not have the virus.