O.T. eBay malware/virus?

Mark Twain wrote:
I decided to do a HDTune scan of the new drive:

http://i66.tinypic.com/r0w12a.jpg

http://i63.tinypic.com/6scu8o.jpg

It still shows nothing! Now whats going
on here? The S.M.A.R.T. should be working.

Thoughts/suggestions?
Robert

Some of your AV software ?

I don't know what else can block SMART.

*******

On my Win7 SP1 setup, I can show you a second method.
Speedfan has a readout tab. It's not very convenient though.
I couldn't find the Save option to save as a text file.

In this picture, I glued two pictures together because the
window isn't resize-able.

https://i.postimg.cc/pd8WFHH0/Speed-Fan-SMART-table.gif

( for reference: http://almico.com/sfdownload.php )

The install file is here. Same version as used in photo.
Click to start immediate download.

http://almico.com/speedfan452.exe

I don't see a reason this will work any better, as
if the AV software is blocking access, it'll block
SpeedFan too.

Speedfan was originally invented to give access to
hardware controls on cooling fan speed. But it's
got a lot more functions too. I use it when I want to
record various temperatures in the PC, while running
Prime95. I wish my VCore regulator has a thermistor,
as it's the part that gets burning hot.

Paul

Yeah, but I'm using the exact same A/V on the
780 as the 8500 and the 8500 works fine. It
doesn't makes any sense.


Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I set the Admin Account on the 780 so
that the home page is blank and thought
I would do the same to the 8500 but when
I tried it didn't take and I tried it
several times.

I must be doing something wrong.

Robert

What's supposed to happen, is normally the "actual Administrator"
account is disabled.

Your user directory, is supposed to belong to "Administrator Group".
That gives you administrator powers, when the UAC prompt appears
on the screen and you click "Yes, I meant to do that" kind of thing.
By doing it that way, the user is responsible for giving permission
to "elevate" for certain activities. If you're installing
a program, you need elevation for that, so expect a UAC prompt.

You have options such as turning off elevation prompts, or you
can also turn on the actual Administrator account, and when you
do and you log in as Administrator, you run commands elevated
all the time. This is dangerous, if you click on an email attachment
which is an EXE, as malware could tip over the machine when you
run that way.

To see the accounts on the machine, you can try:

wmic useraccount list full

and sometimes the description there will hint what an
account is for. On WinXP, there are several accounts
used for specious purpose. Windows 7 is a bit better.

What I've forgotten, is how to list all the accounts.
As the above command only lists "real" accounts, not
updateus or trustedinstaller or SYSTEM. Somewhere, there's
a list of SIDs that will give away the number of accounts
actually present.

This command is used by people who want the Administrator
account enabled, from its normally disabled state.

Net User Administrator/Active:yes

A person who belongs to the Administrator Group, could
use that command to turn on the actual Administrator account.

Paul

Just a thought, should I run the Kapersky
CD in the 780?

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Yeah, but I'm using the exact same A/V on the
780 as the 8500 and the 8500 works fine. It
doesn't makes any sense.


Robert

Well, like I told you, this has happened to me
too, and I haven't been able to figure it out.
Usually, it stays busted.

I've also had SMART data corrupted, so it was
absolute garbage... But that was Win10 at work :-/
They fixed that after a few months. SMART works
today, as I think they gave up on trying to ruin it.

Paul

Mark Twain wrote:
Yeah, but I'm using the exact same A/V on the
780 as the 8500 and the 8500 works fine. It
doesn't makes any sense.


Robert

I have additional tools in my toolbox.

If a Windows OS ****es me off, I have the option
of booting Linux and installing SmartMonTools.
It gives access to SMART too, but without any
Windows fluff to get in the way of it. I use that
if I absolutely have to know the health status.

Paul

As I said, I rarely go there so I'll
leave well enough alone.

Robert

It's just frustrating after installing a
new HD and all to have the same, exact problem.

I'm not sorry I did though,..the 750GB was
the original HD so it was time to put a new
one in.

Robert

Well Linux is way beyond me and I rely
on your good judgement and expertise.

So it seems everything is OK unless you'd
like me to do any further tests etc.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Just a thought, should I run the Kapersky
CD in the 780?

Robert

Symptoms ?

Any signs it needs a scan ?

Usage pattern ?

Do you use the 780 enough
for it to be infected since the last
time you used it ?

The SMART readout issue, there's not too much reason for
a malware to attack that.

It's purely up to you if you want to spend
two hours having the machine scanned.

Kaspersky is multi-threaded, to a point. I think
it can use at least four cores if they're available.
The speed varies with the kind of files it's scanning.

Once in a great while, it will "crash out". The
program will stop scanning. This happens typically
when it hits a ZIP file with around 400,000 files
inside it :-)

You're not likely to have one of those :-)

Source packages for Thunderbird, Firefox, or Chromium,
might upset the Kaspersky Rescue CD, as those are pretty
big ZIP collections. I don't have any other ZIP files
that even come close to being that big.

What I do, is move those things to another drive,
before scanning. There may be an exclusion setting,
but I can't be bothered looking for it.

Paul

No,.. I was just suggesting it
because of the S.M.A.R.T problem.

Robert

I want to thank you for helping me
with everything; I now have a fresh
Kapersky 18 CD and have a new 2TB HD
in the 780 and everything is looking
good.

Thanks again
Robert

I thought we were done but I have
problem....maybe the cause of the
S.M.A.R.T

I've noticed that the 780 is noticeably
slower since changing the HD's.

I first noticed this when I ran scans
and it's taking forever. I usually run
scans on both computers at the same time
and the 780 isn't too far behind the 8500
but now it's like it cycling in a loop
rather than scanning its that slow.

I'm running a Avast full virus scan and it
hasn't moved from 27% in 5 minutes!

Is there a way to check this out?

Robert

Well maybe I'm overreacting here,..
but it does seem slower.

I just started a Avast scan on the 8500
and it also seems rather slow.

Thoughts/Suggestions?
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Well maybe I'm overreacting here,..
but it does seem slower.

I just started a Avast scan on the 8500
and it also seems rather slow.

Thoughts/Suggestions?
Robert

Run HDTune, and see whether the seek time
is noticeably slower on the drive.

Since the disks were cloned with Macrium, if
you wanted to have both disks in the machine
(and you have racks or sliders), you can benchmark
both of them.

I use several 2TB drives here of various
sorts, and haven't noticed a problem. They're
just as fast as the 500GB ones.

Paul