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A friend of mine got the "Department of Justice" ransomware virus.I spent 6 hrs trying to get rid of it.Used all the tricks in the book. The final outcome was I used a Linux boot disc to save his personal files. That went fine.Then I booted into the WinXP disc with the idea to reformat and reinstall Windows. It went through all the gyrations with the final thing being "remove all discs and press enter to reboot. I did.When the computer came on I couldn't get past the MOBO splash screen. Can't get into the BIOS nothing.I'm so pissed off.
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That is bad news. I never encountered one so bad I couldn't still get to the BIOS.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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John,
I can feel you frustration man, I wish you guys the best with this one.
PS: Thanks for the heads up on this critter.
Later,
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John, I had the exact same problem last week with a friend’s computer. I had to pull the HD, put it in a SATA to USB adapter and format the drive. I placed the HD back into his computer and loaded his OS and drivers. What a PITA this virus is!
I just wonder why some people consider corrupting other people's computers as fun!
The bumper sticker said "I'm a veterinarian, therefore I can drive like an animal".
Suddenly I realized how many proctologists are on the road.
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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I'm headed back to the ill computer.I pulled the CMOS battery in HOPES the BIOS will reset itself.
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You have to leave the battery out for several minutes.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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One thing I always do is to leave the task manager running all the time. That way if a bizarre screen comes up, I can end that application/process and then run malwarebytes immediately.
I guess that won't work 100% of the time, but it hasn't failed yet (as I look down and notice that the task manager is not running at the moment!!).
I think those kinds of viruses still require you to click on the ransomware page to activate it (but I might be wrong).
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John, any speculation on how your friend got this? Browsing? Sharing a file?
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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John, I have battled this virus in the past. It can be removed without resorting to reformting the HD.
It ain't easy. Best to have a second computer on hand so you can google options and download files from web. I recall, HitmanPro was a big part of the solution. Good luck.
BIAB – 2026, Reaper (current), i7-12700F Processor, 32GB DDR4-3200MHz RAM, Motu Audio Express 6x6 - My SoundCloud.
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I'm headed back to the ill computer.I pulled the CMOS battery in HOPES the BIOS will reset itself.
Now yer on the right track. I would have first measured the voltage drop in circuit, would be willing to bet the cmos battery is very low, couldn't get the thing to boot properly. Sometimes pulling it like that and letting it rest, it will get some sort of Surface Charge, but even if it does boot the machine afterwards, good idea to at least check the voltage level in-circuit, or just replace the cmos bat. The malware, which is on the hard drive, could not have kept it from going through boot or into bios, but the install may have put a bit of excess drain on the cmos battery, which is likely old and gettin' a little weak anyway. When the voltage crosses the threshold where it cannot power the chip, she daid. --Mac
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If its any consolation, the Toshiba Satellite Win7 nightmare I'm working on tonight, whew.
Avast full scan reported and quarantined maybe 40 some instances.
Browser Adware attack, the ubiquitous "conduit" - rather easily removed by comparison with this "Internet Helper" piece of @#@$.
Malwarebytes scanning right now, has reported 134 Objects found in 47 minutes and still running...
And get this, the customer's complaint and reason to call was, "no sound".
Three browsers, IE, Chrome and FireFox, all of 'em hijacked, a boot time long enough to go to the kitchen and make Mom's slow cook potroast recipe and come back just in time to be almost booted up, and this guy waited until he couldn't make a Skype call anymore to get concerned?
Dunno if this one is going to survive yet...
--Mac
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To add to your list of possibilities, Mac, I have owned several Toshiba laptops, including most recently a Toshiba Satellite running Win7. The hard drive failed. The good news is, I replaced it with an SSD and the performance is dramatically improved. Still, it's lots of effort to get everything loaded and working again.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Defraggler reports the hard drive is in good shape.
Today...
At this minute in time...
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I had the "Dept of Justice" problem last month. Luckily a friend of mine had put me on to the image program called Macrium Reflect. It is a free download, and once you make an image of your HD --(I do this every so often) the Lennox rescue boot disk gets you back on track with no problem.
Unfortunately this won't do you any good without prior preparation.
Good luck.
Jim
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Securitytango.com for most malware, though probably not this POS. I learned about it here--store for future reference.
Incidentally, I've been getting more notices of attack pages in Firefox lately. I always close the page immediately and go back to what I was doing in the first place. I do risky stuff with one of my PCs, but I run Avast and malware scans on a regular basis. It's been years since I've been bitten.
We now return you to your regular programming.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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Turned out to be a simultanious HD failure.The minute that I unplugged the HD It booted to the Windows disc.I totally reformatted and installed Windows.When it does it's first reboot to then continue I get a "Disc read error". I have a small 8g drive I'm going to install this am to further confirm. The machine is a little long in the tooth.I decided to wipe the drive because he had had this before and reinstalled windows BUT didn't reformat. The computer was a real mess even before this attack.If my drive fails I'll suspect the PSU.
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Sounds like a plan, John.
After quarantining/removing over 600 objects, malwares, registry events, after hittin' the Uninstall Programs repeatedly, you name it, this little Toshiba is runnin' like a raped ape this morning, almost hate to have to hand it back to the guy so he can crap it up again...
--Mac
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Those department of justice viruses have been upgraded over time and have gone from being fairly easy to remove to rather hard. It used to be as simple as booting up in safe mode and doing a system restore to an earlier time. The latest versions of the virus are blocking safe mode and/or delivering a message that system restore did not work (even though it did).
The Cryptolocker malware that is out there now makes it insane to have an internet connection and not have your computer backed up. This is the scariest virus/ransom ware that I've ever seen. No one knows how to fix it once you have been infected with it. It just cannot be undone.
Keith
2026 Audiophile Windows 11 RYZEN THREADRIPPER 3960X 4.5GHZ 128 GB RAM 2 Nvidia RTX 3090s, Vegas,Acid,SoundForge,Izotope Production,Melodyne Studio,SONAR,3 Raven Mtis
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This Wikipedia article on Cryptolocker should put the fear of God into anyone tempted to use an illicit P2P site. How about 10 Bitcoin* to get your files unencrypted--maybe? *Current Bitcoin value = $957.42
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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