Does my PC have a virus? What do I do?

[Dr. FunFrock]

I don't know if this is meant to be a 100% hardware troubleshooting subforum if it is the case I apologize but I seem to have a malware problem on my PC and I wasn't sure where to ask for advice...

I was trying to access my AppData folder earlier and I noticed it wasn't showing. I checked in the View panel of windows explorer and Hidden items was unticked. I did not do that. When I try to enable it the explorer refreshes itself and it auto unticks the radio button immediately. After rebooting my computer another shady behavior popped up, my wifi says it isn't connected but I'm not 100% sur that it isn't. It won't display the networks or let me do anything to the WiFi adapter. So I turned off the router's wifi momentarily just in case.

This to me looks like a virus and a quick Google search seems to indicate that I might be right, but I'm not 100% sure it's not just windows bugging out.

What should I do? I have launched a Bitdefender scan but I guess it'll take ages on my old clogged up system and I don't know if it can be trusted... Is there something I can do to speed it up, like some folders that I should do a manual scan on? Additionally Bitdefender seems to find some password protected files but isn't asking me for any password, is that normal? Is it just skipping anything password protected? 

What do I do if it doesn't find anything? I'm willing to format everything and reinstall windows but how can I make sure that the virus is actually neutralized, will a normal windows formatting be enough or do I need to use some program to write zeroes on every drive? What about my home network do I need to scan or replace everything with a drive? And how can I save my work that is on my computer, I have one folder with work projects that I absolutely cannot loose but I'm afraid that if I plug in my external SSD the malware might copy itself to it...

This is an unprecedented situation for me in 25 years of using computers I've never had to deal with something similar so I apologize for that flurry of questions and thank you for your patience and for any advice you might give.

[will0hlep]

Alot of people assume that Viruses and Malware are responsiable for almost all computer problems (especially when they're in a panic), but what they forget is that malware is usually written with a purpose, like spying on you, stealing your details, passwords or card info or mining bitcoin on your machine. Because of this only terriably written viruses and malware would do stuff that gets them caught (there are exceptions like shockware which want you too know about them but they do far more extreme things than this). TLDR: This (imo) is probably not a virus, but you can run a scan to be sure.

 

I recently had the issue with the automatically unticking hidden items problem. I believe some part of file explorer had become corrupted although I can't off the top of my head remember the fix. It was one of window's many scan and repair features. As for the internet icon, it does bug out some times in my experiance, but usually it's okay again after a restart.

[will0hlep]

To fix the hidden files checkbox I beleve I followed instructions similar to these:

"I would suggest you to follow the below steps and check if it helps.

Method 1.

I would suggest you to reset the Windows explorer. Please follow the steps:

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc and locate for Windows Explorer.

2. Right click on the Windows Explorer and click on End task.

3. On top of the Task Manager click on File and click on Run new task.

4. Type explorer.exe inside the box and hit Enter.          

Method 2.

This issue could be due to the system file is corrupt. I recommend you to perform SFC scan, System File Checker is a utility in Windows that allows users to scan for corruptions in Windows system files and restore corrupted files. Follow the below link on how to run SFC scan.

 

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows_10-update/system-file-check-sfc-scan-and-repair-system-files/bc609315-da1f-4775-812c-695b60477a93"

 

Hope this helps

Source: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/hidden-files-keeps-unchecking-itself/a99cc58c-12d7-4371-9fa8-3757e8e5f1b7

[Dr. FunFrock]

23 minutes ago, will0hlep said:

Source: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/hidden-files-keeps-unchecking-itself/a99cc58c-12d7-4371-9fa8-3757e8e5f1b7

So a guy there says it's BitDefender messing up windows and I should turn it off to change the setting

 

And BitDefender says "it's not me you have a virus" https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1940/

 

I think I trust the Microsoft guy but it's a bit weird from BitDefender's part. I may wait till the scan is complete before trying anything.

 

To be clear I know the windows network menu frequently bugs out but what I found a bit sus was that it said my wi-fi was off and I couldn't turn it back on when I clicked the little WiFi icon but when I checked my network adapters the WiFi adapter looked like it was on. Also usually when the bottom bar menu bugs out usually a reboot fixes it and it didn't this time.

Still I'm fully prepared to believe this is just a windows bug

 

[will0hlep]

4 minutes ago, Dr. FunFrock said:

So a guy there says it's BitDefender messing up windows and I should turn it off to change the setting

 

And BitDefender says "it's not me you have a virus" https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1940/

 

I think I trust the Microsoft guy but it's a bit weird from BitDefender's part. I may wait till the scan is complete before trying anything.

 

To be clear I know the windows network menu frequently bugs out but what I found a bit sus was that it said my wi-fi was off and I couldn't turn it back on when I clicked the little WiFi icon but when I checked my network adapters the WiFi adapter looked like it was on. Still I'm fully prepared to believe this is just a windows bug

 

 

Yeah, I also have bitdefender. I found that comment and page when I can trying to fix this and prompty decided it was unlikely to be malware (for reasons above) or bitdefender messing about with my registry (cause i'd had it installed for ages with no issues).

The wifi issue just makes me think it's even more likely that this is a corrupt windows file and not some form or malware or an issue with bitdefender.

Have you tried the 2 methods I posted above?

[Dr. FunFrock]

Method 1 doesn't work, unsurprisingly because two full reboots should also have restarted the explorer. 

 

As for method 2, I ran SFC in verifyonly and am waiting for the results 

[Dr. FunFrock]

Okay things are weird. SFC /verifyonly returned some corrupted files so I ran sfc /scannow with the computer plugged in via Ethernet and rebooted after it said it had successfully repaired the corrupt files.

Now things are working but what do you know, BitDefender just popped up and just coincidentally detected a "threat" about 30 seconds after I rebooted.

So idk, might have been an actual threat and running a SFC might have allowed the antivirus to work properly and detect it, or it might have been BitDefender who corrupted some files in the first place and freaked out when I repaired them, in any case it's a bit weird.

I'll still do a full system scan and a couple other things to make sure it's not actually malware but I think it's most likely at this point that BitDefender messed up. In any case, thanks a lot for the help @will0hlep