[SOLVED] I've Lost info and I'm Sure I have SOmething Crawling Around

[Chubby215]

Hi guys, SO for about a month now I've been dealing with the Google/Bing Malware/Infection Whatever you wanna call it. When I type in a search in Chrome it bounces to BING. I researched and researched how to fix this and nothing worked. I've tried EVERYTHING. I built my PC and consider myself to have advanced IT knowledge but after a deep Win Defender scan along with Spybot I found nothing so I've been using Firefox exclusively lately until I get some answers. Usually when something like this happens, I'll bounce all the important info on my internal HD to an external and just nuke it & reinstall my OS.

I'm a music producer and media consultant so the data on my internal is precious. After losing my job and unemplyment issues I'm unable to purchase a new external for backup and all of my drives are reaching a maxed out state so I had to get creative with where I move stuff. A littl bit to here, a little bit to there like I mentioned already. Here's what else is going on. Whenever I run Spybot, it ALWAYS finds the same three things. Sometimes it'll find something new but it's always the same 3-4 items which I easily remove. Now when I run a Spybot scan it says "Congratulations nothing found!" which is very strange.

I began the process of moving important data to an external and hit my first VERY LARGE issue. I used cut command on a video folder (about 40gb +/-) containing all of my work for my art and business and pasted it to a reliable external I always use. I saw no task bar during the transfer and the folders and subfolders show up on the external except they are empty!! ALso, the main folder's name is "All Vid" which I can clearly see on the external although empty but when I run a search it does not find it even though I can see it. I did a search and can't find it anywhere. I had a 2nd semi large folder of business info that I cut and pasted at the sametime with that folder which did the same thing. Shows up in the external but when I open them up they're empty. And yes I went into options and changed view options to be sure I'd see the files. Here's my PC info before I explain my last issue.

Ryzen 6 core 3600 CPU
36GB Corasir Vengeance DDR4 3300 speed RAM in 2 sticks.
Nvidia GTX 1050 ti GPU
Samsung EVO 500gb SSD (main HD with OS installed)

I ran Windows Defender and it found nothing even the deep offline scan. When I try to show protection history is closes out. OH!! I almost forgot!! What made me look deeper into the virus scenario more in depth was when I tried to log into Magic Legends by Cryptic Gaming run through ARC Gaming which is like Steam. I go through the log in/start up process and I get a screen saying "You can't play this game right now". Now this is an Alpha I got chosen to test so no info online but I assumed a server reset or something. A day later I tried and same thing. This was when I decided to start taking action to save my files such as Cutting and pasting like I mentioned above. I found some info that said if I'm getting this messege with the game I definitley have something infecting my PC.

I uninstalled Chrome which was my main browser (above I typed my issues with that) and added Duck Duck Go to Firefox. Tried to load the game and same thing. Says I cannot play at this time!! I've been able to figure out and fix many similar issues with my PC's over the years and I never take it somewhere to get fixed but I'm stupified right now and terribly worried that I lost that data I cut/pasted to begin the reset OS process. Here's the last thing. I read that even tech workers turn to Malwarebytes for issues like this and since I was unable to find anything with Malwarebytes (premium version said no issues found) Even that said no issues found!!! I tried starting up in safe mode, chose my hard drive so I could run it in safe mode. When I tried to do that after a black CMD screen with all sorts of info it finally said "Unable to locate Oporating System, insert or try another drive" or something similar to that message. WHAT?!! So I'm unable to access any apps in safe mode to run scans.

So here's my issues. The 89gb's or so of files I cut/pasted are showing as empty on the external. I'm confident there's malware or a virus but nothing will find it. When I try running in safe mode to access my HD and run Malwarebytes it says no OS found. I can then restart just fine which is how I'm here right now. I'm more of a hardware guy when it comes to my rig as I said I've built mine the past 15 years or so. I know SOME cmd prompts but programming is not my forte. I need to clean this up, find that data so I can get it all safely on an external including what I didn't cut/paste yet and then I plan on nukng this pig and reinstalling my OS. I tried system restore too to no avail. Why won't the game play? Where's my data? I've never come across anything like this before. Please help me! [Facebook Messenger info removed by moderator].

Thank you so much for any help!

 

[Ralston18]

Wondering:

"Now this is an Alpha I got chosen to test so no info online but I assumed a server reset or something ". Who, how, when, etc, did you get "chosen"?

What three things does Spybot always find?

If you used cut and paste to reorganize your files it may be that the paste was accidentally pasted into a different location than you thought.

If you know the filename(s) or even file types you can try a global search for the files. It appears that you have searched rather extensively but do not hesitate to search other drives and folders. Or use wildcards.

Here are a couple of links to help you learn and apply some file search commands:

https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000309.htm

https://www.computerhope.com/findstr.htm

You can easily find other similar tutorials and guides. Read first and focus on just finding (hopefully) the files. Once found they can be copied and reorganized as required. And backed up as well.

How full are your various drives? If enough drive space is not available the cut and paste process may fail outright with some error or take a very long time as the files are fragmented and scattered about in pieces where ever drive space can be found.

Look in Reliability History for error codes and warnings - even informational events. Then use the timeline to determine when the problems began; maybe around the date you were chosen and/or you started cutting and pasting files.

I recommend using Copy [edited original post to correct a command error] commands versus cut/paste or Move commands.

Yes you end up with duplicate files but you at least have the opportunity to check the target location and verify that the files are there, recoverable, and readable.

 

[Chubby215]

Wondering:

"Now this is an Alpha I got chosen to test so no info online but I assumed a server reset or something ". Who, how, when, etc, did you get "chosen"?

What three things does Spybot always find?

If you used cut and paste to reorganize your files it may be that the paste was accidentally pasted into a different location than you thought.

If you know the filename(s) or even file types you can try a global search for the files. It appears that you have searched rather extensively but do not hesitate to search other drives and folders. Or use wildcards.

Here are a couple of links to help you learn and apply some file search commands:

https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000309.htm

https://www.computerhope.com/findstr.htm

You can easily find other similar tutorials and guides. Read first and focus on just finding (hopefully) the files. Once found they can be copied and reorganized as required. And backed up as well.

How full are your various drives? If enough drive space is not available the cut and paste process may fail outright with some error or take a very long time as the files are fragmented and scattered about in pieces where ever drive space can be found.

Look in Reliability History for error codes and warnings - even informational events. Then use the timeline to determine when the problems began; maybe around the date you were chosen and/or you started cutting and pasting files.

I recommend using Copy [edited original post to correct a command error] commands versus cut/paste or Move commands.

Yes you end up with duplicate files but you at least have the opportunity to check the target location and verify that the files are there, recoverable, and readable.

Hi and thanks for getting back to me. I didn't paste it somewhere else by mistake. It's a folder called "All Vid" inside that folder are subfolders of various titles with videos inside. The folder "All Vid" shows exactly where I pasted it and when I open it teh subfolders are there. When I open THOSE they are empty. My external drives have plenty of space available. I checked all this under PC info before I made the move. You're right about using copy. I always do but I needed space on the drive I was moving these folders from and just used cut. I should've copied then deleted the folder on the original drive but alas here I am. Any advice? And thanks!

 

[Chubby215]

Hi and thanks for getting back to me. I didn't paste it somewhere else by mistake. It's a folder called "All Vid" inside that folder are subfolders of various titles with videos inside. The folder "All Vid" shows exactly where I pasted it and when I open it teh subfolders are there. When I open THOSE they are empty. My external drives have plenty of space available. I checked all this under PC info before I made the move. You're right about using copy. I always do but I needed space on the drive I was moving these folders from and just used cut. I should've copied then deleted the folder on the original drive but alas here I am. Any advice? And thanks!

To be clear this is a process I've done multiple times. I build my PC's and when in doubt? Nuke! Lol. I have a reliable copy of Window Washer that wipes the drive clean as a whistle then I reinstall my OS but not before moving important files to an external. I've done this dozens of times but this never happened. I tried running a CMD search for "vid" following the links and it found Vid files in System 32 folders which is weird. Thanks!

 

[howtobeironic]

Welp, that sounds really messed up. I have a hunch that your stuff may be sitting deleted in either the external or the source drive. That's a hunch though, just that it could be and if we don't look at deleted files now it'll be harder as we overwrite on it. Might as well run one. The strange stuff can be dealt later on (and I suspect some heavy corruption in Windows files, may not be a virus, even)

Please try running Recuva (https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva)on both the source and destination drive. It's pretty straightforward, select "search for everything", choose the drive, let it scan. See if your files (or anything that resembles them) exist.