PC "Blocked"

[J4CKO]

My uncle rang me concerned having been chatting with "Microsoft" who had rang whilst he was on the computer, and now it has a pin on it and says "BLOCKED" across the screen.

Obviously been hit by a scam from a call centre, he isnt fussed about the PC apart from some photos on it.

He is going to buy a new laptop and not entertain any more cold callers, he was unsure of how it panned out but said he could see the mouse moving so he has obviously done something.

So, he is going to buy a new laptop and I have this Dell desktop from which to extract the photos, I have a multi format drive caddy and am hoping I can plug it in and find all the jpg etc files and put them on a USB for him, any pointers ?

[deckster]

I wouldn't be plugging that drive into anything I cared about. But there's also an excellent chance that everything on there is encrypted anyway.

If I were to try this I'd use a completely blank machine that I'd booted into Linux, that wasn't connected to the internet, and was wiped as soon as I'd got the files I wanted off it.

[dundarach]

1. remove your HDD

2. connect his

3. boot from removable media

4. retrieve files

5. scan files

OR

1. boot his PC from removable media!

[Captain_Morgan]

Don’t do any of that & restore important files from the backup.

[eeLee]

these things are usually easy to bypass, boot into safe mode with networking and you'll have access to the data. I assume the "blocked" thing is something overlayed across the login screen and hope for his sake that nothing has been encrypted.

he should also cancel his credit card as I assume he paid them about $90 to lock his computer up.

[dirky dirk]

hows he fell for that the daft sod?

[spitfire-ian]

dirky dirk said:

hows he fell for that the daft sod?

When I worked in IT I would warn people not to fall for those kind of calls. I did have people tell me that I was being paranoid and it was Microsoft responding to the send error report messages

[J4CKO]

Captain_Morgan said:

Don’t do any of that & restore important files from the backup.

Ahh ok, I will just go back in time and ask a 76 year old bloke who isnt computer savvy to set up a backup

Dont think any money changed hands, he says none did.

He was ont he PC at the time otherwise dont think it would have been a problem.

[Countdown]

J4CKO said:

My uncle rang me concerned having been chatting with "Microsoft" who had rang whilst he was on the computer, and now it has a pin on it and says "BLOCKED" across the screen.

Obviously been hit by a scam from a call centre, he isnt fussed about the PC apart from some photos on it.

He is going to buy a new laptop and not entertain any more cold callers, he was unsure of how it panned out but said he could see the mouse moving so he has obviously done something.

So, he is going to buy a new laptop and I have this Dell desktop from which to extract the photos, I have a multi format drive caddy and am hoping I can plug it in and find all the jpg etc files and put them on a USB for him, any pointers ?

I know this is the "lazy option" but I'd take it to a local PC shop and ask them to recover the files. They'd probably charge you £40 but they do this sort of thing all the time.

[Captain_Morgan]

J4CKO said:

Captain_Morgan said:

Don’t do any of that & restore important files from the backup.

Ahh ok, I will just go back in time and ask a 76 year old bloke who isnt computer savvy to set up a backup

Dont think any money changed hands, he says none did.

He was ont he PC at the time otherwise dont think it would have been a problem.

That’s a pity, might be worth suggesting he does start one to save hassle next time round ;-)