Computer is blocked from rebooting by scam

[waynetatsch]

I stupidly called a "Microsoft Software Support 855-253-8267" phone number that showed up a sudden scree that came up saying my laptop has been "blocked" and I needed to contact Microsoft support immediately. The guy had me enter some run commands that gave him control over my laptop. He showed a "ZEUS TROJAN" was found on my computer, then tried to sell me AVG security software and asked me for personal info which I refused. He then said he couldn't help me anymore and hungup. Now my computer will not boot. Some strange screen comes up asking for my computer password. I can't get to Windows 10 at all. HELP!!!!!!

[WAWood]

@waynetatsch

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

The problem is that even if you were able to login again, there is no real way of knowing what the intruder loaded into your PC, or what other damage they did.

The only SAFE thing to do is do a factory reset of your PC using HP Recovery Media,  Problem is, this will erase everything from your hard drive.  So, before you do that, you want to do the following:

1) Remove the hard drive from the PC
2) Purchase a USB-to-Hard Driver adapter kit
3) Connect the old drive to the working PC
4) Copy ONLY the personal files and folders you want to save to the working PC.  Do NOT copy everything at that will transfer the damage the intrude made to the other PC.

I see you're running Win10. Did the PC come preinstalled with Win10? Or, did you upgrade it from a prior OS to Win10?

This is important as the recovery/reset method is different for the two situations.

We can proceed when you provide the answers.

[waynetatsch]

I bought the computer NEW from HP in December 2 months ago. It came with Windows 10. It has a 'Factory Reset' function in Windows 10 - which I tried but at "40%" into it - it failed saying "experienced an error, no changes were made."

[WAWood]

@waynetatsch

As I said, there is no way of knowing how much damage the intruder did to your PC, and they could hav easily corrupted the HP recovery function.

You should be able to order HP Recovery Media to do a factory reset using this link:  http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/bph07143

Good Luck

[waynetatsch]

Thank you very much!

[WAWood]

Glad I was able to help ...

[REO51ST]

@waynetatsch

If the screen looks like this then you may still be able to RESTORE to an EARLIER DATE???

SYSKEY STARTUP PASSWORD

Although they are getting much better and have learned to remove all restore dates.

REO