Surprise Software Installation & Scanning

[JohnWK]

At some time within the past few days, without my having consciously agreed to any installation permission request, seven new shortcuts have appeared on my desktop. Several programs apparently related to the shortcuts also appear as persistent/irritating pop-ups, suggesting that my system suffers from a combination of outdated drivers, inefficient performance settings, or malware, and offering to update, correct, or delete, as appropriate. The seven new programs are ByteFence Anti-Malware, WinTonic, Brave, PCAcceleratorPro, WinZipDriverUpdater, DriverTonic, & AvastFreeAntivirus. Might HP Support have pushed this multi-product instation, or MicroSoft, or have I most likely precipitated the problem by inadvertently agreeing to a package installation while trying to close an advertising pop-up?

[Dragon-Fur · Accepted solution]

@JohnWK

Commentary

HP and Microsoft do some interesting things - I think this is something "else".  HP and Microsoft do not benefit from loading unknown and weird software onto your computer.

I would guess that you did as you suggest:  Inadvertently allowed this stuff onto your computer by visiting a website and / or downloading something completely unrelated to the mess you now have on the Desktop.

The problem, if there is one other than the obvious, is that considering you do not know how it happened, there might now be "other things" on the computer that are also unwelcome.

Start with the easy stuff:  Try to ferret out and uninstall the unwanted software / applications.

Use the best security software you have available and run a deep scan.

And / Or, if you keep your Restore Points relatively recent AND if you cannot easily dig out the vermin, consider using System Restore to take the system back to a date/time before this happened.  This is a bit extreme - don't bother with this if you are confident you can scrub out the nasty bits.

At the least, check your browser History - never, never go back to whatever you were visiting just before this happened.  Reset / Remove cookes from the browser, too.  Clear the cache, and if you like, remove those "odd" websites from your History, too.

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