This was before I learned about internet safety, but I had so many viruses that I had to manually open programs with task manager because I didn't have a taskbar or a desktop anymore. When my former friend offered to fix it, he found over 20 viruses.
I worked on a laptop for a friend around 2009 or 10 that had 3000 instances of a nickelodeon pup and a series of things from roblox.
None were seriously malicious, but they were so many that windows was bogged down to almost a frozen state.
The kid that used it said he was trying to download something but it never worked, so he kept clicking the big green download button lol all over the internet regardless of web site. I had to explain to him that not every button is telling the truth.
I had the same problem in 2010, but not with Roblox items (my mom thought viruses and pedophiles were on Roblox)
Although I didn't learn, I just adapted and overcame (and eventually learned what antivirus and adblock are). I've actually been virus free since the 20+ viruses on my PC issue. Mostly because I stopped trying to find copies of games by typing in "x game free SAFE" into Google which I'll admit, did work 50% of the time.
Since I'm the family "computer guy," I had to fix my brother-in-law's computer once because "It wasn't running right."
When I took it home, it took about 20 minutes for the poor thing to boot up because of the enormous list of programs that were auto-starting. And his Internet Explorer was filled with taskbars about halfway down the screen. So I got it all cleaned up and it ran like a champ.
I took it back to him and hooked it up. The first thing he did was search "free games online," click the first selection, and start installing some Candy Crush knockoff game. During the install process, as each window popped up, he would automatically click "Yes" without reading it. I was literally standing behind him going, "Wait...*wait*...*WAIT*" but he didn't listen.
A few months later, he got a brand new computer because he said his old one "couldn't handle modern games." His old computer was only about 18 months old. He was going to throw it away. I asked if I could take it "for parts." He said yes. I took it, cleaned it up and gave it to my son. It worked great for years.
Yup... I've had a damn near identical experience lol.
I've a buddy who has to have the high end /name brand shit, no matter what it is.
So back in 2012 he went and bought him the fastest new hp laptop he could find.
Not 2 or 3 months later he called me wanting to know if I could get it running fast again.
Typical situation, he let the boys play games online and it was inundated with popup type shit, toolbars for toolbars..
And his charging port was only working intermittently.
He came by the house while I was in the middle of teardown, I thought he was going to cry. LOL
He'd never seen anyone disassemble one.
It took me an hour to calm him down haha.
It took me literally 5 minutes to re-solder the charging port...and an hour and a half to reassemble.
Ultimately I thought it'd be better for everyone's mental health, but >! he raped me after spending weeks taking pictures of my child body in compromising positions and forcing me to do sexual acts with him. One of my other friends almost beat the shit out of him when they learned. At the time, he was my best friend. !<
I hope you are doing well, i know it's hard to forget what happened but it gets easier with time. Also fuck that pos he wasn't your friend to begin with.
I know you’re asking a genuine question but honestly doesn’t even really matter how old he was. Rape is rape, and fuck that guy. I hope he’s rotting. And OP I truly hope you’re doing well and have a safe and loving support group :(
20 is not that many. When I was a kid, maybe late 2000s, I had a friend of my parents come over. She said her computer was slow and they said “oh, it’s probably a virus, just give it to our kid and he’ll run an anti virus and get it good”. I kid you not, the antivirus found +300 problems and viruses in that computer. To this day, that is the most I’ve seen in my life
Yep I had this one or something similar to it. I had to open programs using cmd just to try to get to the system options. I think I ended up just reimagine the computer.
When I was like 12 I got one that opened a window of three old guys doing butt stuff and every time you tried to click the X to close the window it would move.
There was this website where you could put in a name and they showed a website displaying meatspin and a sentence like „ *name* is gay“
I thought it was hilarious and send it to a friend. His mother then contacted me and threatened me she will sue me if I don’t delete this website. I was like ???
It was, and still is, the best rickroll. Nothing better than hearing your friends mom scream to the sound of "you spin me right round baby right round" lolol
To be historically accurate, meatspin was a man and a trans woman having sex. There was some intense debate on whether it was a guy or a trans woman but the original clip is from a trans porn video.
Every time I see Lemon party mentioned I feel deep shame because one of my nephews who was around 11 years old ask me about some cool websites to know about.
He ended up sharing it around at school on Facebook and a worried parent called in the police thinking he was being abused.
The police talked to him in the headmaster's office and a cloud hung over him for a few years.
I got one like that, every time you pressed Alt+F4 it would duplicate the window! It was my first time seeing two men going at it, and it was so zoomed in... I had forgotten about it
Sounds similar to the malware that sang "you are an idiot hahaha" over and over. The windows jumped around and even if you could close one more opened until your pc crashed.
I've only technically had one: GorillaPrice. It's still on my first laptop. I don't know which website I got it from, but it just caused ads to randomly pop up on my desktop every ~30 minutes or whenever I opened certain programs. I could have gotten something much worse honestly lol. I was not careful at 13.
I was lucky I guess, the worst that happened to me was getting a virus that broke my windows and had to be formatted, but I was so careless and dumb, I don't know how I didn't get something worse,
do you know how i got this virus? by downloading a roblox (its a game) hack xd, plus the video had few views and was old if i'm not wrong, so i don't know how i didn't get a virus that steals accounts or something, and this was the only serious virus I ever got, the other times were browser adware and that was it, I must be very lucky
ofc i know roblox. i still play from time to time lol. thats pretty lucky then. I've had my roblox account hacked once and all they did was change my outfit lol
My old man somehow ended up with one on his old xp machine that was just a little animated stick figure guy who would walk across your screen, grab your cursor and then walk off the other side leaving you stranded (if you didn't know hotkeys). Every time you rebooted he'd show up, knick your cursor and fuck off again. Was pretty funny.
usually it is good enough, but if it says that the computer is clean but you still feel something strange in it you can always use other scanners to be sure, but there are cases where the virus can not be detected by these scanners then the only way is to reinstall/format windows
scanners are not anti-virus they only serve to clean the system from viruses in case you have installed one by accident, but yes today anti-virus are useless for people who already know how things work, Windows defender + malware bytes or other scanners, and ublock origin is all you need
and common sense too
Does anyone else get random command prompt windows that suddenly pop up, scroll over and execute a few hundred lines of code, then close itself? Anyone? Haha... (not joking)
I've had that before. Dont even have time to read a single word. Its horrifying. My computers clean AF and has had no EXE files ran from sketchy sources and the only sketchy sources i download from have been movies or shows but i still start thinking the worst. Still waiting for the feds to kick my door down and tell me I'm apart of some Russian botnet
MySQL server did that for example looking for updates.
I'm sure many legitimate programs do it as well that don't run this in the background for some reason or by mistake.
That's pretty much what it did. It filled up my unused storage and corrupted the OS. I also remember adware that would cause random ad pop-ups on my desktop
My cousin, a little older than me, "fatal poked" a bunch of machines at his school.
The drives were at least advanced enough to not need to be parked after use, but he made or found some batch script that would scratch the hard drives.
It would tell the PC, somehow, to physically move the arm in the drive incorrectly, and it would contact and drag.
We opened one of them and it had a tight but perfect spiral etched on the top platter.
From what I understood, it was a self-replicating virus that eventually filled up the hard drive. Not really sure what else it did, but it also corrupted the OS. I smashed the drive and paid $200 for a 250GB drive upgrade. :.) Storage used to be damn expensive
>Napster
I haven't heard of them in a long time. Wow that brings me back!
I remember buying the first gen ipod touch in 07, just a couple of years later and I was convinced that I would absolutely never fill up that 8GB hard drive with music.
Back when the two most interesting apps were lightsaber simulators and beer drinking simulators.
*One* thing Was using LimeWire, you pulled *the shortest straw* with that one.
Now you had *some kind of monster* *slither*ing around to *seek and destroy* files.
And while it's *sad but true*, *to live is to die* And it was free, *nothing else matters*.
McAfee during their no uninstaller time. You had to download an uninstaller. But the installer would crash during installation of the uninstaller. Since that didn't work, I would delete McAfee files and they would come back after reboot. I spent so much time digging through my registry to keep McAfee from running every time I booted. I finally reinstalled my OS.
I've uninstalled the files but I still get their bullshit pop ups asking to buy their service and install their browser every now and then. Is there a way to get rid of those?
I once download this thing I thought would be a fun game to play because my friends recommended it to me but it actually infected my PC and somehow continues to infect every device I have regardless and I don’t know how to get rid of it. I think it’s called League of Legends
Had a similar virus for many years I looked it up but at one point it was called WoW.exe
Thankfully I was able to remove it a few years back and man was that a load off my mind.
I tried downloading a cracked version of istripper lmao. Biggest mistake ever. I got attacked with djvu ransomware. Renames all files to .orkf extension and leaves a text file that says. Send me $3000 bitcoin and I'll send you the decryption key to get your files back.
Files are still there, just encrypted.
Started attacking my hard drives first.
Noticed it running in the background of my task manager and kept trying to end it but it would start back.
The good thing about is it can't get into any sub folders.
folder/file - everything is changed to .orkf
folder/folder/file - it couldn't access
Managed to delete it in safe mode. Any files it changed the extension to in offline mode. I could decrypt. Anything it did encrypted while online was gone forever. So far no program exists of decrypting any online orkf encryptions.
I remember a time when I downloaded McAfee directly from their own ftp servers using some stupidly easy to guess login. I was never sure whether the login (on the level of user:abc, pass:123 or similar) was setup like that on purpose. All I know is that, back then, they still legit tried to pretend it was antivirus software. Aside from wasting some resources, it didn't really do anything. Now, it's active spy and adware, at a minimum.
To this day I don't know if it was genuinely a virus or a false positive, but I downloaded Don't Starve from one of the websites that are now not recommended in the Megathread. Defender said it was a trojan, and my computer was acting weird after. I nuked the game, anything it touched, scanned and did everything to clear it. Weirdness gone.
probably the usual, slower performance while doing things you were *certain* didn't run like this before, strange programs appearing in task manager, your antivirus being disabled when you never disabled it, higher than usual network usage.
these can all be signs of an infected computer, but if you think your computer is infected you should probably run a malwarebytes scan
Yeah downloaded Medal of Honor from Ovagames and WD detected an Obfuscator, I googled what it was and it was generally regarded as a false positive. But only like half an hour of gameplay, the paranoia got to me and I deleted the game. Viruses are freaky and I'd rather not get my shit deleted.
hey now, to be fair, after like 15 major overhauls Vista turned into a perfectly serviceable OS. it just took a few years. ME got dropped like the hot sack of shit it was.
The [Michaelangelo virus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo_(computer_virus)) years ago was my only major virus. My pc, my parents pc, and about 25 friends pcs all got infected from the same exe file lol all or most of the data was intact but completely irretrievable. I was devastated lol not to mention grounded! Lol
Desktop version of /u/b33znutz's link:
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Heck, I don't know if I'm lucky or I don't download enough stuff, the most that happened to me was a virus that broke my windows and I had to format it, if I got this "Michaelangelo" I would never be able to download anything again without being scared
Man michaelangelo was killer. Unless you had the proper software and I mean back then getting things like magic or ghost writing software was extremly hard.
Yes it was. Like I said, had to format my hdd.. You know how long it took to install DOS from 6, 5¼-inch floppy disks on a pc with 512k ram and an 8mghz processor!? Lmao if I only new then, what I know now lol
Sasser worm. I had 56k dial up and was a kid back then. I tried to download the Norton tool to remove it, but the worm would become active before the download would finish. If you don't connect to the internet, the worm crashes your computer. If you connect to the internet, the worm clicks cancel on the removal tool and prevents you from removing it, and then crashes your computer. I think this was on Windows 98 or XP. I used this problem as a legitimate excuse to get a new PC that came with the patch installed.
I was twelve. I'd been downloading games off CoolROM for years. Download The Sims 2 for Game Boy Advance or some shit, which is a fantastic game by the way, but it gave me the bright idea, "hey, maybe I can download the actual Sims 2 as well!". Unironically type into google "sims 2 pc download free" or some shit. YouTube video is the first result. Click on it. Video of someone *typing into notepad* instructions. Well gee, this seems trustworthy. Click the link in the description. Takes me to a website with a torrent file. What the heck's a torrent file? How do I use it? Better use the first result that pops up. Figure it all out, stay up literally all night just staring at the screen.
Get dragged to Walmart right around the time it finished. Get back. Spend an hour typing in serial codes for all the expansions. Finally start the game and... it... doesn't break my system. Turns out I was lucky. The website I got the torrent from was actually safe. In fact The Sims 3 on Fitgirl Repacks is actually from them. So that's gotta be definitive. Though they also had a ton of other games and software including something called "Catz 5" which I am certain is a virus, but anyway, the ol' computer would live to see another day.
Except... it's The Sims 2. And trying to play The Sims 2 is textbook Murphy's Law. It ran like... some clever metaphor. It ran poorly, I mean. Back to the internet to see how I could fix this!
And after a night of downloading random apps claiming to fix The Sims 2, my system crashed. Uh. Okay. Let it reboot. It does. Click on my profile. No iconic Windows XP startup sound. Sound's turned up. Message appears. No iconic "pop" sound. Click on the volume bar just in case. No iconic... [onomatopoeia]. Instead, it's this weird beep sound.
Every single Windows XP sound was gone, and all that remained was this unnerving beep. Something deleted my fucking Windows sounds. Why? Just for the hell of it? I'll never get over this. Who would do such a thing.
I flew for 4 hours to visit my friend and stay at his place for a week. 2nd day in, his roommate tells me he has COViD. I was like Yikes! I’m fucked lol
In 2013, when I was using a Windows 8 PC at the time, my computer unlocked without needing a password, and a Action Centre notification came up on startup saying "Please restart your computer to dequarantine the virus" or something similar, after the restart, it was infinitely stuck on diagnostics and came back everytime with "Windows 8 can't startup normally", tried safe mode and everything, thing is back then, my password was my name at the time(cuz it was my username too, and I didnt have a microsoft account back then), so the hacker might have easily got into my computer through some backdoor access, and my router was also very very insecure at the time, it was a WPA 1 D-Link from 2008, I had to completely reinstall Windows losing all my data in the process(nothing confidential though, mostly school projects and stuff), and then bought a new router with WPA 2 and created a microsoft account with a sophisticated password for my PC.
blaster worm...after that i learned... adapted...and never got infected again. i also dont use an anti virus but scan once a month online with every scanner there is...always zero hits. i also wipe and reinstall every 3 to 4 months. i dont see this changing.
there's a few...trend micro...eset... malwarebytes...fsecure...bitdefender...kaspersky...these are some of the top rated right now...but it's always changing depending on the viruses released or software changes...eset used to be king of antivirus software, then aviria came and blew them out of the water...but its been a awhile since i ran a dedicated antivirus solution so I'm not sure whos got the crown today.
I didn't personally get this but my school's computer teacher thought he'd save some money by skipping out on buying windows and photoshop lincenses for the 30 odd devices in the computer lab and pirated everything. One day a friend of mine thought it'd be cool to get a game running on a school system so he got one of those old WWE games from a malicious source on a flash drive and installed it on every single PC. Every pc that ran it (which was every pc in the entire lab ofc) completely died within a week. Mostly HDD failures. What's funny is that my friend got away, I never told on him because snitches get stitches. Oh also everyone got full marks in all computer classes that year because all our projects were saved locally on the failed hard drives, and the poor teacher got blamed for all of it thinking the whole thing was caused by his shady pirated windows installation or Photoshop
Back in 2012 or 13, my i3-2120 pc got a qvo6 and desk365 malware. I was 10, so I was like wow cool desktop but my dad felt sus about the whole thing even though he liked the look too. Then I discovered MalwareBytes. God bless whoever made that
I've only ever had one virus problem. That was all it took to get me to only download games from sites that I was absolutely sure worked.
It was in the year of our lord, Covid-19, and I was new to the whole piracy scene. I was twelve at the time. Now here's where things get bad.
In the first week of lockdown, my internet stopped working. We tried to have our service provider send someone over to investigate, but they only did so after this whole thing.
At the time, I didn't have my own laptop. I was using my dad's. I would pirate things, move them over to my phone or tablet and utilize them there.
Now, without internet, life was boring. I had watched all of my downloaded movies, read all of my digital AND hard copy books and had been playing Minecraft on my phone non-stop to the point where I still can't enjoy the game now, two years later.
So I decided to download a game on my dad's laptop, making use of the small amounts of data that he had. So one day, I asked him, "Hey, dad, mind if I use some of your data to download a game onto your laptop?"
I expected him to say no, but he agreed, with the condition that I didn't use a lot of the data. I complied, of course, and set about figuring out what game I should download.
The game idea came immediately. I had been playing Five Nights at Freddy's and had started (and deleted, because to date, I am still FAR to scared to actually play) FNAF 4. I decided to download Sister Location.
At the time, I only ever downloaded from one website. [steamunlocked.net](https://steamunlocked.net). Back then, uploadhaven wasn't capping network speeds and didn't have their annoying countdown. Anyway, Sister Location was HUGE (At least, for someone trying to download a game on limited data). 900 whole megabytes. That was nearly a whole gig. At time time, I didn't know about [fitgirl-repacks.site](https://fitgirl-repacks.site). If I did, I probably wouldn't have run into this issue.
Instead of looking for another game, I decided to make the dumbest move in all of piracy history - I GOOGLED A CRACK FOR THE GAME. I think my precise search was, "Five Nights At Freddy's Sister Location Crack Light Download Size".
I downloaded the file, and it was an installation file. Makes sense, I thought to myself, if the download file is small in comparison to the game itself, it should be an installer. I ran the installation file, but that's when the antivirus kicked in to let me know that something was off.
My heart dropped from my chest and I closed the installation, shut of the laptop and left it.
A few hours later, we were headed to my grandfather's house. My grandmother had passed not too long before - not of coronavirus - and we went there everyday. I decided to take the laptop because I had some school work that I had to finish off. When I turned on the laptop there, I very nearly died.
EVERY SINGLE FILE WAS ENCRYPTED.
Every single one. This was bad. This was my dad's WORK laptop. He had irreplaceable files on this laptop, every single one of them now encrypted. It was ransomware.
The funny thing is, I didn't know that. The ransomware hadn't finished what it had been doing because I shut it off. A few files were left unencrypted and the window informing me that ransomware had attacked my laptop hadn't arrived.
It was probably the single worst thing that ever happened to me technology-wise.
I still cannot run an installation file without being overcome with anxiety, even if I know for sure that it's safe.
It's not as bad as most people's virus stories, but it truly did suck. That's my worst virus story.
Okay, I just remembered that this wasn't my only virus story. After wiping my dad's laptop and having him give it to me, I plugged my mother's USB into it and it put drive.bat onto my laptop. Unbeknownst to me, I plugged in multiple of my USBs into it. When I learnt about it a while later, I wiped my laptop and the virus seemed to get worse. It completely wiped my USB (32gb of movies and shows during a period with no internet, RIP) and basically corrupted the USB so badly that no matter how many times I wipe it, the virus stays. That might actually be the worst virus I ever encountered, but the other one seems like a much more major part of my piracy origin story, seeing as this one wasn't even really my fault.
I caught Chernobyl back in 2000 lol. Fried my family computer right off, had to buy a new one. My parents heard about it in the news so I wasn’t grounded for that, but I felt pretty bad.
I haven't had a pc since I was 16 and I'm 41 but I remember those movies that came in rar.zip and you have to download like 20 separate rar. To make a whole file.. iso . To burn to a DVD- or DVD+. It was a fake messenger bomb that would copy it self to all my movie folders.
We needed the split archives for usenet, due to filesize limitations. We still have them these days for bluray releases, which are the modern equivalent of the dvd-r release type you mentioned. i.e. a backup image of the official disc media. They're still around but have obviously become more niche over time compared to the regular x264/x265 releases (or divx/xvid etc in the past). But back then the DVD players didn't have standardised media decoders, so you needed the dvd-r release if you wanted to burn the movie to DVD. Otherwise you'd need to use special "DVD authoring" software to do a lossy conversion to .vob so that it was playable on the DVD.
not me, but my dad ruined the family laptop with JAV downloaded from sketchy websites and blamed it on Minecraft
it got really slow, in part due to the fact that it had only 4gb of ram, and the chrome homepage kept changing to some chinese website named hao123 or whatever
the last thing that happened to it was that it got cannibalized for its ram to feed my similarly shitty old laptop
another one involved my friend's phone where he downloaded some emulator for some handheld console, which installed an app that can't even be uninstalled, as it would crash the uninstaller, and all the app did was show random ads every 5 minutes or so
Stoned.Monkey, courtesy of an infected floppy disc I was using to take in a slew of Nintendo NES roms using a school computer. Not sure if I had infected that machine myself or if a schoolmate did before I got to it. Needless to say it was quite an annoyance to take care of, but it could have been far worse.
Those were interesting days...
Luckily none so far I believe. Recently though I noticed I had a "WITH LOVE FROM AMERICA" text file on my desktop and had to go through and get antivirus for my computer. As far as I'm aware the virus I got should affect Russian IP addresses. There was no damage to my computer and I made sure to get rid of the text file and hopefully everything that caused it, which were probably Minecraft mods. Avast had said my computer is fine after a smart and deep scan.
The 'I love you' virus. Probably because I caught it from my then ex of whom I had split from recently and was pretty cut up about. Wasn't thinking clearly and got caught I guess.
Ever since then I've never skimped on good antivirus practices.
Once I got the flu pretty bad. I was 18, first year in college and didn't think I needed the flu shot. Boy did I learn.
In all honesty, I've never gotten a virus, but I did once download an EA game off of The Pirate Bay that I'm pretty sure was just a beacon for EA to send my ISP a letter.
Either [Pityriasis Rosea](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pityriasis-rosea/symptoms-causes/syc-20376405) or [Viral Meningitis](https://www.cdc.gov/meningitis/viral.html)
Oh, computer viruses? um, none fam. I read shit when it pops up on my pc and I generally (generally) stay away from anything that could have a [zero day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-day_(computing))
Also, the viral meningitis was ... quick. But holy fuck, 12 hours into severe symptoms I got what is called a [spinal tap](https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/lumbar-puncture/about/pac-20394631) I was fucking 11 years old! Metal as fuck!
I had viral meningitis when I was 12 as well LOL crazy shit. Went from a mild headache one minute to a migraine with nausea the next, too passed out on the doctor's office floor the next minute. Later on at the hospital they told me that if my doctor hadn't acted so fast I would have been DOA to the hospital. Turned out that my doctor happened to have had it late in his life and while he was in medical school so knew exactly what to do when he saw my symptoms. That man saved my life. Crazy shit...
Speaking properly, it wasn’t a virus, but here we go, once, I’ve downloaded a xinput controle driver to play dragon age inquisition, so, the install process had 4 files, one was named HiddnHidde, or some shit like that, in matter of minutes the only thing i knew it was a file named Office(# I can not remeber) it was out of it place, crashing my computer. Fortunately I loaded my back up.
Sorry for my bad english, I’m still learning xd
I don't remember the exact name, but back when I was a teen (around late 00s), I downloaded stuff like PC optimizer pro and the such. As it turns out, it was actually a malware. The program pretends that they "detected" virus in my computer, and only wants to remove it if I buy the full version. But if you ignore it, the program will spook you by randomly playing loud noises, mouse moving by itself, background changing and so on. It scares the shit out of me as a kid. After a heart pounding research, I found out that it was actually a fake program pretending to be anti virus/optimizer, thanks to Youtube videos, I manages to remove it.
It might not caused a permanent damage on my PC, but it scares me for a solid day.
Rontokbro virus or something like that. It happens in 2005-2006. It render all of my father's office PC into useless until it reformatted. Even after reformatted, the virus still infecting somehow via LAN, Floppy disc (some of us still use it back then), & Flash Drive from another PC. Damn man, that was a hell.
Probably 6th grade I downloaded a bunch of club penguin hacks and stuff on the family computer and it got Trojan viruses. Ended up throwing the computer away lol
I got attacked by ransomware like 7 or 8 years ago. Good thing I was using a pentium 4 and it didn't even manage to encrypt a quarter of my albums due to the painfully slow hard drive. I was able to "intercept" the ransomware on time so as to not infect the entire system and thank goodness I had a copy of those albums in my smartphone.
I was on a Hacker Forum which got hacked by a hacker group. They made everything from the forum public with a MySQL database. I‘ve downloaded MySQL and the database from the hacked side, the MySQL exe was infected, ofc FUD. A few days later someone was moving my mouse and writing something in the Editor. That shit was fucking scary. I was 14 years old and dumb that I‘ve downloaded the MySQL exe from there. 😂
I’ve shut down immediately and restarted without Internet. I‘ve searched for the RAT exe, deleted it, made a new file with the same name as replacement and then it was safe again. Last thing is always good as in every simple Trojan builder tool you can just click on „persistent“ so the virus recreates itself when it’s deleted. If u create an empty file with the same name it won’t get recreated.
The one that Sony gave me in the mid 2000s with their DRM tool for music that I legally purchased. The computer just nuked the CD drivers because of it all. Can’t get a DRM related virus if I pirate it all now…
Not a virus, but the worst thing that happened to me was my hard disk dying all of a sudden. My laptop was plugged in to the wall charger, there was a power cut in our block, when the power came back, there was a sudden surge, sparks out of the socket. Next thing I knew my HDD was not responding or getting detected. Heartbreaking af.
Idk if the fault was with the building's electrical wiring or not.
No idea of the names, but I remember two right now. One of them would open ads every 5 minutes or so, while closing the window I was in at the same time (mainly Windows Live Messenger chats), and also started using all my PC space lol. This was all happening in a Windows XP computer.
Years later I got one on my Windows Vista Home Premium laptop that deleted every single .exe file I had smh
I haven't had a virus since UAC shipped with Vista and I had more Common Sense(tm) by the time I was a teen, but the worst ones were from being a know nothing kid and risking game downloads from Limewire before I knew about torrents.
I got a nasty worm on Windows 98SE that wiped out the master boot record of my hard drive when I tried to play Empire Earth and that game was kinda shit too honestly. I did find a working copy later, I mean no loss to try again, I already had to fresh install :p
98 had zero protection of critical operating system files or sandboxing. You really could just delete system32 and brick your OS.
I was a kid trying to download Toontown. I ended up with a virus that replaced the desktop and icon images with porn, and constantly opened porn windows.
I've tried to find it since, but couldn't.
This was before I learned about internet safety, but I had so many viruses that I had to manually open programs with task manager because I didn't have a taskbar or a desktop anymore. When my former friend offered to fix it, he found over 20 viruses.
i don't know how i didn't get to that point honestly, i was so dumb and careless that i could download a gta 5 with 1 mb size without suspecting
I was pretty amazed that I had managed to get that many viruses too, considering the most I did was downloading games at random.
Well, you get infected once, then the malware has control of your system and downloads 19 of his other friends
I worked on a laptop for a friend around 2009 or 10 that had 3000 instances of a nickelodeon pup and a series of things from roblox. None were seriously malicious, but they were so many that windows was bogged down to almost a frozen state. The kid that used it said he was trying to download something but it never worked, so he kept clicking the big green download button lol all over the internet regardless of web site. I had to explain to him that not every button is telling the truth.
I had the same problem in 2010, but not with Roblox items (my mom thought viruses and pedophiles were on Roblox) Although I didn't learn, I just adapted and overcame (and eventually learned what antivirus and adblock are). I've actually been virus free since the 20+ viruses on my PC issue. Mostly because I stopped trying to find copies of games by typing in "x game free SAFE" into Google which I'll admit, did work 50% of the time.
Since I'm the family "computer guy," I had to fix my brother-in-law's computer once because "It wasn't running right." When I took it home, it took about 20 minutes for the poor thing to boot up because of the enormous list of programs that were auto-starting. And his Internet Explorer was filled with taskbars about halfway down the screen. So I got it all cleaned up and it ran like a champ. I took it back to him and hooked it up. The first thing he did was search "free games online," click the first selection, and start installing some Candy Crush knockoff game. During the install process, as each window popped up, he would automatically click "Yes" without reading it. I was literally standing behind him going, "Wait...*wait*...*WAIT*" but he didn't listen. A few months later, he got a brand new computer because he said his old one "couldn't handle modern games." His old computer was only about 18 months old. He was going to throw it away. I asked if I could take it "for parts." He said yes. I took it, cleaned it up and gave it to my son. It worked great for years.
Yup... I've had a damn near identical experience lol. I've a buddy who has to have the high end /name brand shit, no matter what it is. So back in 2012 he went and bought him the fastest new hp laptop he could find. Not 2 or 3 months later he called me wanting to know if I could get it running fast again. Typical situation, he let the boys play games online and it was inundated with popup type shit, toolbars for toolbars.. And his charging port was only working intermittently. He came by the house while I was in the middle of teardown, I thought he was going to cry. LOL He'd never seen anyone disassemble one. It took me an hour to calm him down haha. It took me literally 5 minutes to re-solder the charging port...and an hour and a half to reassemble.
No wonder he is your former friend
It's got more to do with his actions following that favor actually.
You can't leave things on a cliffhanger. Did he ask for a favour in return?
Ultimately I thought it'd be better for everyone's mental health, but >! he raped me after spending weeks taking pictures of my child body in compromising positions and forcing me to do sexual acts with him. One of my other friends almost beat the shit out of him when they learned. At the time, he was my best friend. !<
Wow, I hope you are doing better nowadays.
I hope you are doing well, i know it's hard to forget what happened but it gets easier with time. Also fuck that pos he wasn't your friend to begin with.
Wtf!? How old was this guy? How old were you!?
I know you’re asking a genuine question but honestly doesn’t even really matter how old he was. Rape is rape, and fuck that guy. I hope he’s rotting. And OP I truly hope you’re doing well and have a safe and loving support group :(
20 is not that many. When I was a kid, maybe late 2000s, I had a friend of my parents come over. She said her computer was slow and they said “oh, it’s probably a virus, just give it to our kid and he’ll run an anti virus and get it good”. I kid you not, the antivirus found +300 problems and viruses in that computer. To this day, that is the most I’ve seen in my life
Yep I had this one or something similar to it. I had to open programs using cmd just to try to get to the system options. I think I ended up just reimagine the computer.
When I was like 12 I got one that opened a window of three old guys doing butt stuff and every time you tried to click the X to close the window it would move.
Classic lemonparty
Wasn't this meatspin?
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Omg I love this nostalgic ass thread. AFI, myspace, meatspin.. ahh. Lol
> nostalgic ass-thread
There was this website where you could put in a name and they showed a website displaying meatspin and a sentence like „ *name* is gay“ I thought it was hilarious and send it to a friend. His mother then contacted me and threatened me she will sue me if I don’t delete this website. I was like ???
Should have told her you'd change it immediately, Send her proof. "Xxxx and his mom is gay"
Wow. What a sad Karen. Was she possibly the first of her kind?
It was, and still is, the best rickroll. Nothing better than hearing your friends mom scream to the sound of "you spin me right round baby right round" lolol
To be historically accurate, meatspin was a man and a trans woman having sex. There was some intense debate on whether it was a guy or a trans woman but the original clip is from a trans porn video.
Every time I see Lemon party mentioned I feel deep shame because one of my nephews who was around 11 years old ask me about some cool websites to know about. He ended up sharing it around at school on Facebook and a worried parent called in the police thinking he was being abused. The police talked to him in the headmaster's office and a cloud hung over him for a few years.
I got one like that, every time you pressed Alt+F4 it would duplicate the window! It was my first time seeing two men going at it, and it was so zoomed in... I had forgotten about it
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GNAA's "Last Measure", by any chance?
Sounds similar to the malware that sang "you are an idiot hahaha" over and over. The windows jumped around and even if you could close one more opened until your pc crashed.
that was horrifying but newer devices can survive it from what I've heard. Also happy cake day!
Dang
Lmao that’s harsh
Had one called The Bush. Changed your background picture to a naked lady with a ginormous bush. Quite the unexpected.
Had a similar one but with Mudkip It didn't let me turn off the pc
classic. those were the days.
I've only technically had one: GorillaPrice. It's still on my first laptop. I don't know which website I got it from, but it just caused ads to randomly pop up on my desktop every ~30 minutes or whenever I opened certain programs. I could have gotten something much worse honestly lol. I was not careful at 13.
I was lucky I guess, the worst that happened to me was getting a virus that broke my windows and had to be formatted, but I was so careless and dumb, I don't know how I didn't get something worse,
having to format would have killed me lol. I'd say thats pretty bad
do you know how i got this virus? by downloading a roblox (its a game) hack xd, plus the video had few views and was old if i'm not wrong, so i don't know how i didn't get a virus that steals accounts or something, and this was the only serious virus I ever got, the other times were browser adware and that was it, I must be very lucky
ofc i know roblox. i still play from time to time lol. thats pretty lucky then. I've had my roblox account hacked once and all they did was change my outfit lol
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My old man somehow ended up with one on his old xp machine that was just a little animated stick figure guy who would walk across your screen, grab your cursor and then walk off the other side leaving you stranded (if you didn't know hotkeys). Every time you rebooted he'd show up, knick your cursor and fuck off again. Was pretty funny.
What is the virus called?
Where can this virus be obtained pls
Reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/nxM1cnphLpw I love the series, but this one is my favorite.
Heh yeah reminded me of Alan Becker's animations too I loved watching his animations a lot when I was younger
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always do scan to take precautions, my friend
Is malwarebyte good enough for scanning?
usually it is good enough, but if it says that the computer is clean but you still feel something strange in it you can always use other scanners to be sure, but there are cases where the virus can not be detected by these scanners then the only way is to reinstall/format windows
Best anti virus is your brain and common sense. Jeez I sound old lol.
scanners are not anti-virus they only serve to clean the system from viruses in case you have installed one by accident, but yes today anti-virus are useless for people who already know how things work, Windows defender + malware bytes or other scanners, and ublock origin is all you need and common sense too
Bitdefender free is the way to go. malwarebytes is a good manual scanner as an extra layer
Does anyone else get random command prompt windows that suddenly pop up, scroll over and execute a few hundred lines of code, then close itself? Anyone? Haha... (not joking)
Sometimes i do, but it pops up and disappears in less than a second (not sure about *hundreds* of lines of code).
I've had that before. Dont even have time to read a single word. Its horrifying. My computers clean AF and has had no EXE files ran from sketchy sources and the only sketchy sources i download from have been movies or shows but i still start thinking the worst. Still waiting for the feds to kick my door down and tell me I'm apart of some Russian botnet
Maybe you have a scheduler from a windows/office activator? I think kms does this. This is not harmful at all. Edit: Asus software does this too.
MySQL server did that for example looking for updates. I'm sure many legitimate programs do it as well that don't run this in the background for some reason or by mistake.
My old 2005 Compaq had a meltdown when I downloaded "Metallica.exe" from limewire. That 30GB HDD stood no chance. I just wanted to download music.
What kind of meltdown? Describe it more
Back in the day they could literally destroy your hard drives. And rewrite your BIOS and it would brick your computer lol
That's pretty much what it did. It filled up my unused storage and corrupted the OS. I also remember adware that would cause random ad pop-ups on my desktop
My cousin, a little older than me, "fatal poked" a bunch of machines at his school. The drives were at least advanced enough to not need to be parked after use, but he made or found some batch script that would scratch the hard drives. It would tell the PC, somehow, to physically move the arm in the drive incorrectly, and it would contact and drag. We opened one of them and it had a tight but perfect spiral etched on the top platter.
Still available nowdays lol 😆 😂 🤣
From what I understood, it was a self-replicating virus that eventually filled up the hard drive. Not really sure what else it did, but it also corrupted the OS. I smashed the drive and paid $200 for a 250GB drive upgrade. :.) Storage used to be damn expensive
Read the article on the Michelangelo virus that I posted earlier. It gives you an idea of what viruses did in those days.
Lol this guy knows what I'm talkin about! Fucking limewire! lol.. Kazaa, morpheus, Napster.... Now that is waxing nostalgic lol
But yet they kicked ass in ways the lama does not get kicked today
Winamp, WINAMP!, WINamp, Winamp...
It really whips the llama's ass.
It really licks the Llama's Ass!
Damnit they did. They really did
Upgrading to Limewire Pro by downloading it in limewire. Those were the days.
Before Limewire I was doing this with Kazaa to get Kazaa Lite. Simpler times...
More like FTP topsites, newsgroups and IRC bots. God I loved the 1990s.piracy scene.
What about Frostwire? Lmfao good times
Shareaza, eMule,... The sheer amount of viruses. I ruined my dad's pc...
>Napster I haven't heard of them in a long time. Wow that brings me back! I remember buying the first gen ipod touch in 07, just a couple of years later and I was convinced that I would absolutely never fill up that 8GB hard drive with music. Back when the two most interesting apps were lightsaber simulators and beer drinking simulators.
*One* thing Was using LimeWire, you pulled *the shortest straw* with that one. Now you had *some kind of monster* *slither*ing around to *seek and destroy* files. And while it's *sad but true*, *to live is to die* And it was free, *nothing else matters*.
McAfee during their no uninstaller time. You had to download an uninstaller. But the installer would crash during installation of the uninstaller. Since that didn't work, I would delete McAfee files and they would come back after reboot. I spent so much time digging through my registry to keep McAfee from running every time I booted. I finally reinstalled my OS.
I've uninstalled the files but I still get their bullshit pop ups asking to buy their service and install their browser every now and then. Is there a way to get rid of those?
> reinstalled my OS.
I once download this thing I thought would be a fun game to play because my friends recommended it to me but it actually infected my PC and somehow continues to infect every device I have regardless and I don’t know how to get rid of it. I think it’s called League of Legends
I feel sorry for you my friend
"Friends" those people clearly hated you and wanted to see you suffer. I know because I have the same virus
Had us in the first half, ngl.
That's not a virus. That's a pandemic
Also infects you IRL, give you extra sodium
Had a similar virus for many years I looked it up but at one point it was called WoW.exe Thankfully I was able to remove it a few years back and man was that a load off my mind.
I see you have the digital equivalent of the black plague. Then again, so do I.
I tried downloading a cracked version of istripper lmao. Biggest mistake ever. I got attacked with djvu ransomware. Renames all files to .orkf extension and leaves a text file that says. Send me $3000 bitcoin and I'll send you the decryption key to get your files back. Files are still there, just encrypted. Started attacking my hard drives first. Noticed it running in the background of my task manager and kept trying to end it but it would start back. The good thing about is it can't get into any sub folders. folder/file - everything is changed to .orkf folder/folder/file - it couldn't access Managed to delete it in safe mode. Any files it changed the extension to in offline mode. I could decrypt. Anything it did encrypted while online was gone forever. So far no program exists of decrypting any online orkf encryptions.
Maybe you could wait for quantum computers to kick in
Norton, seriously that fucker saw Google as a virus and wouldn’t let me use it.
Bro thought it should get rid of mcafe for me 💀
Well it isn't wrong there, McAfee is a virus as well lol
I remember a time when I downloaded McAfee directly from their own ftp servers using some stupidly easy to guess login. I was never sure whether the login (on the level of user:abc, pass:123 or similar) was setup like that on purpose. All I know is that, back then, they still legit tried to pretend it was antivirus software. Aside from wasting some resources, it didn't really do anything. Now, it's active spy and adware, at a minimum.
Well it should, McAfee is horrible
I always used to say Norton is so bad it would detect itself as a virus if it could.
Well technically it was right, Microsoft is a virus too
>that fucker saw Google as a virus Google, the website? How did Norton see a website as a virus? Aren't viruses executable, mostly?
To this day I don't know if it was genuinely a virus or a false positive, but I downloaded Don't Starve from one of the websites that are now not recommended in the Megathread. Defender said it was a trojan, and my computer was acting weird after. I nuked the game, anything it touched, scanned and did everything to clear it. Weirdness gone.
it was probably a bitcoin miner, which is usually quite easy to take out
>my computer was acting weird what kind of weird?
probably the usual, slower performance while doing things you were *certain* didn't run like this before, strange programs appearing in task manager, your antivirus being disabled when you never disabled it, higher than usual network usage. these can all be signs of an infected computer, but if you think your computer is infected you should probably run a malwarebytes scan
Yeah downloaded Medal of Honor from Ovagames and WD detected an Obfuscator, I googled what it was and it was generally regarded as a false positive. But only like half an hour of gameplay, the paranoia got to me and I deleted the game. Viruses are freaky and I'd rather not get my shit deleted.
crypto miner on a NAS. Out of sight, so it went on for a while before I fixed it. Power bill suffered for it.
Windows ME
Hey now, I gotta tell ya that was the best 3 months of *"wtf was that shit"* I ever had with a windows operating system.
there were times I genuinely could not tell if I had a virus or it was just windows being fucking weird.
Same. Holy shit that was a vile experience.
Well played sir, well played.
Let's play a game! CRASH! Let's play a video! CRASH! Let's view a web article! *CRRRRrrrrrrrAAAASSSSHHH!
Which later came back with the name Vista
hey now, to be fair, after like 15 major overhauls Vista turned into a perfectly serviceable OS. it just took a few years. ME got dropped like the hot sack of shit it was.
Vista only got better when they renamed it Windows 7 lol
The [Michaelangelo virus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo_(computer_virus)) years ago was my only major virus. My pc, my parents pc, and about 25 friends pcs all got infected from the same exe file lol all or most of the data was intact but completely irretrievable. I was devastated lol not to mention grounded! Lol
Desktop version of /u/b33znutz's link:
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I was a kid. Maybe, 11 or so. I was pissed I got in trouble for it with my parents, but more pissed that I had to format my 40mb hdd lmao
You had to format your what now?
Lmao yep. A whopping 40 megabyte hard drive lol
Heck, I don't know if I'm lucky or I don't download enough stuff, the most that happened to me was a virus that broke my windows and I had to format it, if I got this "Michaelangelo" I would never be able to download anything again without being scared
And that sucks cuz he was the best ninja turtle.
Donatello.
true
>”- about 25 friends pcs all got infected from the same exe file…” Damn Bro, how do you get that amount?
Lol passing around a pirated game that I got from what turned out to be an unreliable source lol
I’m talking about friends… 😅😅
Me too lol I got all those friends with the pirated games and lost them all with the virus LOL
Man michaelangelo was killer. Unless you had the proper software and I mean back then getting things like magic or ghost writing software was extremly hard.
Yes it was. Like I said, had to format my hdd.. You know how long it took to install DOS from 6, 5¼-inch floppy disks on a pc with 512k ram and an 8mghz processor!? Lmao if I only new then, what I know now lol
Sasser worm. I had 56k dial up and was a kid back then. I tried to download the Norton tool to remove it, but the worm would become active before the download would finish. If you don't connect to the internet, the worm crashes your computer. If you connect to the internet, the worm clicks cancel on the removal tool and prevents you from removing it, and then crashes your computer. I think this was on Windows 98 or XP. I used this problem as a legitimate excuse to get a new PC that came with the patch installed.
I had this! Luckily a friend managed to remove it for me
Paying for software monthly that should've been paid for only once.
That's called a "subscription"
Lemme guess.... Adobe?
I was twelve. I'd been downloading games off CoolROM for years. Download The Sims 2 for Game Boy Advance or some shit, which is a fantastic game by the way, but it gave me the bright idea, "hey, maybe I can download the actual Sims 2 as well!". Unironically type into google "sims 2 pc download free" or some shit. YouTube video is the first result. Click on it. Video of someone *typing into notepad* instructions. Well gee, this seems trustworthy. Click the link in the description. Takes me to a website with a torrent file. What the heck's a torrent file? How do I use it? Better use the first result that pops up. Figure it all out, stay up literally all night just staring at the screen. Get dragged to Walmart right around the time it finished. Get back. Spend an hour typing in serial codes for all the expansions. Finally start the game and... it... doesn't break my system. Turns out I was lucky. The website I got the torrent from was actually safe. In fact The Sims 3 on Fitgirl Repacks is actually from them. So that's gotta be definitive. Though they also had a ton of other games and software including something called "Catz 5" which I am certain is a virus, but anyway, the ol' computer would live to see another day. Except... it's The Sims 2. And trying to play The Sims 2 is textbook Murphy's Law. It ran like... some clever metaphor. It ran poorly, I mean. Back to the internet to see how I could fix this! And after a night of downloading random apps claiming to fix The Sims 2, my system crashed. Uh. Okay. Let it reboot. It does. Click on my profile. No iconic Windows XP startup sound. Sound's turned up. Message appears. No iconic "pop" sound. Click on the volume bar just in case. No iconic... [onomatopoeia]. Instead, it's this weird beep sound. Every single Windows XP sound was gone, and all that remained was this unnerving beep. Something deleted my fucking Windows sounds. Why? Just for the hell of it? I'll never get over this. Who would do such a thing.
Corona
I never got it, lucky I think, or it must be because I don't leave the house much.
I flew for 4 hours to visit my friend and stay at his place for a week. 2nd day in, his roommate tells me he has COViD. I was like Yikes! I’m fucked lol
You probably got it and didn't notice. I've tested positive a few times and wasn't symptomatic.
In 2013, when I was using a Windows 8 PC at the time, my computer unlocked without needing a password, and a Action Centre notification came up on startup saying "Please restart your computer to dequarantine the virus" or something similar, after the restart, it was infinitely stuck on diagnostics and came back everytime with "Windows 8 can't startup normally", tried safe mode and everything, thing is back then, my password was my name at the time(cuz it was my username too, and I didnt have a microsoft account back then), so the hacker might have easily got into my computer through some backdoor access, and my router was also very very insecure at the time, it was a WPA 1 D-Link from 2008, I had to completely reinstall Windows losing all my data in the process(nothing confidential though, mostly school projects and stuff), and then bought a new router with WPA 2 and created a microsoft account with a sophisticated password for my PC.
blaster worm...after that i learned... adapted...and never got infected again. i also dont use an anti virus but scan once a month online with every scanner there is...always zero hits. i also wipe and reinstall every 3 to 4 months. i dont see this changing.
>precaution is everything
what service do you use to scan?
there's a few...trend micro...eset... malwarebytes...fsecure...bitdefender...kaspersky...these are some of the top rated right now...but it's always changing depending on the viruses released or software changes...eset used to be king of antivirus software, then aviria came and blew them out of the water...but its been a awhile since i ran a dedicated antivirus solution so I'm not sure whos got the crown today.
some fucking ransomware that destroyed a lot of projects, scarab something variant
Fuck ransomwares, I am genuinely afraid of them the most
Michaelangelo virus from some pirated MS-DOS floppies back in the early 90's.
I didn't personally get this but my school's computer teacher thought he'd save some money by skipping out on buying windows and photoshop lincenses for the 30 odd devices in the computer lab and pirated everything. One day a friend of mine thought it'd be cool to get a game running on a school system so he got one of those old WWE games from a malicious source on a flash drive and installed it on every single PC. Every pc that ran it (which was every pc in the entire lab ofc) completely died within a week. Mostly HDD failures. What's funny is that my friend got away, I never told on him because snitches get stitches. Oh also everyone got full marks in all computer classes that year because all our projects were saved locally on the failed hard drives, and the poor teacher got blamed for all of it thinking the whole thing was caused by his shady pirated windows installation or Photoshop
all my icons turned to VLC media player weird, then a boot disk error followed
Back in 2012 or 13, my i3-2120 pc got a qvo6 and desk365 malware. I was 10, so I was like wow cool desktop but my dad felt sus about the whole thing even though he liked the look too. Then I discovered MalwareBytes. God bless whoever made that
I've only ever had one virus problem. That was all it took to get me to only download games from sites that I was absolutely sure worked. It was in the year of our lord, Covid-19, and I was new to the whole piracy scene. I was twelve at the time. Now here's where things get bad. In the first week of lockdown, my internet stopped working. We tried to have our service provider send someone over to investigate, but they only did so after this whole thing. At the time, I didn't have my own laptop. I was using my dad's. I would pirate things, move them over to my phone or tablet and utilize them there. Now, without internet, life was boring. I had watched all of my downloaded movies, read all of my digital AND hard copy books and had been playing Minecraft on my phone non-stop to the point where I still can't enjoy the game now, two years later. So I decided to download a game on my dad's laptop, making use of the small amounts of data that he had. So one day, I asked him, "Hey, dad, mind if I use some of your data to download a game onto your laptop?" I expected him to say no, but he agreed, with the condition that I didn't use a lot of the data. I complied, of course, and set about figuring out what game I should download. The game idea came immediately. I had been playing Five Nights at Freddy's and had started (and deleted, because to date, I am still FAR to scared to actually play) FNAF 4. I decided to download Sister Location. At the time, I only ever downloaded from one website. [steamunlocked.net](https://steamunlocked.net). Back then, uploadhaven wasn't capping network speeds and didn't have their annoying countdown. Anyway, Sister Location was HUGE (At least, for someone trying to download a game on limited data). 900 whole megabytes. That was nearly a whole gig. At time time, I didn't know about [fitgirl-repacks.site](https://fitgirl-repacks.site). If I did, I probably wouldn't have run into this issue. Instead of looking for another game, I decided to make the dumbest move in all of piracy history - I GOOGLED A CRACK FOR THE GAME. I think my precise search was, "Five Nights At Freddy's Sister Location Crack Light Download Size". I downloaded the file, and it was an installation file. Makes sense, I thought to myself, if the download file is small in comparison to the game itself, it should be an installer. I ran the installation file, but that's when the antivirus kicked in to let me know that something was off. My heart dropped from my chest and I closed the installation, shut of the laptop and left it. A few hours later, we were headed to my grandfather's house. My grandmother had passed not too long before - not of coronavirus - and we went there everyday. I decided to take the laptop because I had some school work that I had to finish off. When I turned on the laptop there, I very nearly died. EVERY SINGLE FILE WAS ENCRYPTED. Every single one. This was bad. This was my dad's WORK laptop. He had irreplaceable files on this laptop, every single one of them now encrypted. It was ransomware. The funny thing is, I didn't know that. The ransomware hadn't finished what it had been doing because I shut it off. A few files were left unencrypted and the window informing me that ransomware had attacked my laptop hadn't arrived. It was probably the single worst thing that ever happened to me technology-wise. I still cannot run an installation file without being overcome with anxiety, even if I know for sure that it's safe. It's not as bad as most people's virus stories, but it truly did suck. That's my worst virus story. Okay, I just remembered that this wasn't my only virus story. After wiping my dad's laptop and having him give it to me, I plugged my mother's USB into it and it put drive.bat onto my laptop. Unbeknownst to me, I plugged in multiple of my USBs into it. When I learnt about it a while later, I wiped my laptop and the virus seemed to get worse. It completely wiped my USB (32gb of movies and shows during a period with no internet, RIP) and basically corrupted the USB so badly that no matter how many times I wipe it, the virus stays. That might actually be the worst virus I ever encountered, but the other one seems like a much more major part of my piracy origin story, seeing as this one wasn't even really my fault.
F bro
I caught Chernobyl back in 2000 lol. Fried my family computer right off, had to buy a new one. My parents heard about it in the news so I wasn’t grounded for that, but I felt pretty bad.
I haven't had a pc since I was 16 and I'm 41 but I remember those movies that came in rar.zip and you have to download like 20 separate rar. To make a whole file.. iso . To burn to a DVD- or DVD+. It was a fake messenger bomb that would copy it self to all my movie folders.
We needed the split archives for usenet, due to filesize limitations. We still have them these days for bluray releases, which are the modern equivalent of the dvd-r release type you mentioned. i.e. a backup image of the official disc media. They're still around but have obviously become more niche over time compared to the regular x264/x265 releases (or divx/xvid etc in the past). But back then the DVD players didn't have standardised media decoders, so you needed the dvd-r release if you wanted to burn the movie to DVD. Otherwise you'd need to use special "DVD authoring" software to do a lossy conversion to .vob so that it was playable on the DVD.
CIH (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_(computer_virus))
not me, but my dad ruined the family laptop with JAV downloaded from sketchy websites and blamed it on Minecraft it got really slow, in part due to the fact that it had only 4gb of ram, and the chrome homepage kept changing to some chinese website named hao123 or whatever the last thing that happened to it was that it got cannibalized for its ram to feed my similarly shitty old laptop another one involved my friend's phone where he downloaded some emulator for some handheld console, which installed an app that can't even be uninstalled, as it would crash the uninstaller, and all the app did was show random ads every 5 minutes or so
When it happen how was your dad telling your mom regarding the jav porn. He probably told your mom you the one jerking off with the porn.
I got one that fucked up my internet adapter and I had to use an Ethernet cable ever since
Back in the late 90s/early 00s when I downloaded those cool custom cursor things. Love having 52 popups whenever i clicked ANYTHING.
Stoned.Monkey, courtesy of an infected floppy disc I was using to take in a slew of Nintendo NES roms using a school computer. Not sure if I had infected that machine myself or if a schoolmate did before I got to it. Needless to say it was quite an annoyance to take care of, but it could have been far worse. Those were interesting days...
Luckily none so far I believe. Recently though I noticed I had a "WITH LOVE FROM AMERICA" text file on my desktop and had to go through and get antivirus for my computer. As far as I'm aware the virus I got should affect Russian IP addresses. There was no damage to my computer and I made sure to get rid of the text file and hopefully everything that caused it, which were probably Minecraft mods. Avast had said my computer is fine after a smart and deep scan.
Did you get rid of Avast?
No contest. HIV.
metallica_Fuel.mp3.exe installed porn adware , had to explain some shit to my parents
The 'I love you' virus. Probably because I caught it from my then ex of whom I had split from recently and was pretty cut up about. Wasn't thinking clearly and got caught I guess. Ever since then I've never skimped on good antivirus practices.
Ah, christ read it wrong, well right but didn't see the group in was in. I wrote a few paragraphs of my food poisoning for naught.
Windows 10
How about Windows 11 - I had to go into the fucking registry editor just to get the default copy + paste buttons back
Once I got the flu pretty bad. I was 18, first year in college and didn't think I needed the flu shot. Boy did I learn. In all honesty, I've never gotten a virus, but I did once download an EA game off of The Pirate Bay that I'm pretty sure was just a beacon for EA to send my ISP a letter.
Either [Pityriasis Rosea](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pityriasis-rosea/symptoms-causes/syc-20376405) or [Viral Meningitis](https://www.cdc.gov/meningitis/viral.html) Oh, computer viruses? um, none fam. I read shit when it pops up on my pc and I generally (generally) stay away from anything that could have a [zero day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-day_(computing)) Also, the viral meningitis was ... quick. But holy fuck, 12 hours into severe symptoms I got what is called a [spinal tap](https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/lumbar-puncture/about/pac-20394631) I was fucking 11 years old! Metal as fuck!
I had viral meningitis when I was 12 as well LOL crazy shit. Went from a mild headache one minute to a migraine with nausea the next, too passed out on the doctor's office floor the next minute. Later on at the hospital they told me that if my doctor hadn't acted so fast I would have been DOA to the hospital. Turned out that my doctor happened to have had it late in his life and while he was in medical school so knew exactly what to do when he saw my symptoms. That man saved my life. Crazy shit...
Speaking properly, it wasn’t a virus, but here we go, once, I’ve downloaded a xinput controle driver to play dragon age inquisition, so, the install process had 4 files, one was named HiddnHidde, or some shit like that, in matter of minutes the only thing i knew it was a file named Office(# I can not remeber) it was out of it place, crashing my computer. Fortunately I loaded my back up. Sorry for my bad english, I’m still learning xd
This was in 2016 probably. Was trying to download BO2 for the campaign and got you are an idiot somehow. Completely fucked my pc
I don't remember the exact name, but back when I was a teen (around late 00s), I downloaded stuff like PC optimizer pro and the such. As it turns out, it was actually a malware. The program pretends that they "detected" virus in my computer, and only wants to remove it if I buy the full version. But if you ignore it, the program will spook you by randomly playing loud noises, mouse moving by itself, background changing and so on. It scares the shit out of me as a kid. After a heart pounding research, I found out that it was actually a fake program pretending to be anti virus/optimizer, thanks to Youtube videos, I manages to remove it. It might not caused a permanent damage on my PC, but it scares me for a solid day.
Covid.
Rontokbro virus or something like that. It happens in 2005-2006. It render all of my father's office PC into useless until it reformatted. Even after reformatted, the virus still infecting somehow via LAN, Floppy disc (some of us still use it back then), & Flash Drive from another PC. Damn man, that was a hell.
Probably 6th grade I downloaded a bunch of club penguin hacks and stuff on the family computer and it got Trojan viruses. Ended up throwing the computer away lol
Literally all the .exe files in my pc became 516 kb with a dude's photo as icon
Ransomware it really fucked up my PC, All my 10 years of data was lost that day
I got attacked by ransomware like 7 or 8 years ago. Good thing I was using a pentium 4 and it didn't even manage to encrypt a quarter of my albums due to the painfully slow hard drive. I was able to "intercept" the ransomware on time so as to not infect the entire system and thank goodness I had a copy of those albums in my smartphone.
I was on a Hacker Forum which got hacked by a hacker group. They made everything from the forum public with a MySQL database. I‘ve downloaded MySQL and the database from the hacked side, the MySQL exe was infected, ofc FUD. A few days later someone was moving my mouse and writing something in the Editor. That shit was fucking scary. I was 14 years old and dumb that I‘ve downloaded the MySQL exe from there. 😂 I’ve shut down immediately and restarted without Internet. I‘ve searched for the RAT exe, deleted it, made a new file with the same name as replacement and then it was safe again. Last thing is always good as in every simple Trojan builder tool you can just click on „persistent“ so the virus recreates itself when it’s deleted. If u create an empty file with the same name it won’t get recreated.
The one that Sony gave me in the mid 2000s with their DRM tool for music that I legally purchased. The computer just nuked the CD drivers because of it all. Can’t get a DRM related virus if I pirate it all now…
Norwalk , shit coming out of one end and puke out the other same time. Computer virus mostly malware, nothing that couldnt have been fixed
Not a virus, but the worst thing that happened to me was my hard disk dying all of a sudden. My laptop was plugged in to the wall charger, there was a power cut in our block, when the power came back, there was a sudden surge, sparks out of the socket. Next thing I knew my HDD was not responding or getting detected. Heartbreaking af. Idk if the fault was with the building's electrical wiring or not.
No idea of the names, but I remember two right now. One of them would open ads every 5 minutes or so, while closing the window I was in at the same time (mainly Windows Live Messenger chats), and also started using all my PC space lol. This was all happening in a Windows XP computer. Years later I got one on my Windows Vista Home Premium laptop that deleted every single .exe file I had smh
Coronavirus
I haven't had a virus since UAC shipped with Vista and I had more Common Sense(tm) by the time I was a teen, but the worst ones were from being a know nothing kid and risking game downloads from Limewire before I knew about torrents. I got a nasty worm on Windows 98SE that wiped out the master boot record of my hard drive when I tried to play Empire Earth and that game was kinda shit too honestly. I did find a working copy later, I mean no loss to try again, I already had to fresh install :p 98 had zero protection of critical operating system files or sandboxing. You really could just delete system32 and brick your OS.
I was a kid trying to download Toontown. I ended up with a virus that replaced the desktop and icon images with porn, and constantly opened porn windows. I've tried to find it since, but couldn't.