S.M.A.R.T virus or data recovering virus

Last Saturday, I suffered from a computer virus, S.M.A.R.T virus. When I surfed internet web sites to look for documentaries in Japan, something happened to my computer. It turned out later that something bad software was installed on the background when I watched some videos. I did not care about virus on these web sites because I had enjoyed these site for more than two years. Let me describe here what I experienced and how I recover. I would be grad if I could help someone who suffers from same situation.

1. Situation

When I watched a embedded streaming, every software windows suddenly got closed. After that some, small many windows warning hard disc error showed up and they overlapped slightly. In addition to those windows, a big window opened and seemed to start to checking the hard disk condition. It showed that my computer seemed to have many serious matter as shown in the above figure finally. Additionally, a window popped up to encourage to buy some software to fix problems. Another symptom was that many files looked gone including my document, etc. It turned out later that ever files still existed but just made invisible.

2. What I did at first

At first, I did not consider this seriously, because I was thinking optimistically that the widows function of restore of system in accessory would be able to recover everything, but it was not able to work out. After I realized this, I got serious. I investigated S.M.A.R.T virus in the internet, and as I expected, many people suffered from same thing and many recovering solutions are already available there.

3. What I did to recover 

Firstly I had to kill virus software because it stayed at start up and it always interrupted what I was trying to do. So I opened the command window, and typed msconfig and opened it. If I looked at start up software tab, I could see unfamiliar software which was installed at the time when I felts something wrong. When I unchecked the software, then it stopped to work.

Secondly, I had to find where the software was installed. So I went to the folder options in the controlled panel and checked "show hidden folders" in order to show everything. In my case, if I look the desktop, there was a short cut of the virus software, and I found the path by looking property.

Thirdly, What I had to do was to remove the software completely, so I installed a software which can remove any installed software by over writing it somehow.

Forth, many folders still remained hidden. If I show hidden folders by unchecking something, it still remain half transparent. So I had to installed a software which can show folders which were hidden intentionally.

These four actions were what I did so far. Honestly, it looks that everything comes back to normal but I do not know whether these are enough or not. If I look back the past, I had been lazy for security since I had used Window 7 because it looked like robust against computer virus.

When I talked to my friend about this, I was suggested to install security softwares immediately to protect my computer. These are free, so I`m thinking to install them soon. I will tell you what I install after I do it.