Rescuing Your Device from Hackers

I thought i would share this in the hope it might help others and possibly save people from paying technician fees

About a week ago i started having problems on my laptop, the screen flashing and different programs opening and multiplying by themselves

My first thought was that the windows update must have done this as coincidentally the updates were just prior to the problems starting

So i went into my management section and tried to delete the updates , which i did except for one that i could not remove

I then restricted updates from downloading for two weeks

When i had restarted the laptop everything seemed back to normal and i thought that was the solution

Then yesterday afternoon it started all over again, but this time worse than before

I could not do a system restore as i did not have a restore point, which would have been my first option, so i searched google for other solutions

i found one solution that was to remove and reinstall windows

You have to be careful with this as you have two options, one to completely remove everything or remove but keep your files

I opted for keeping the files and started a remove and install

After 2 hours the reinstall stuck at 12% and i saw it would was not going to progress

So i did everything over again and this time it successfully installed the new windows after 4 hours

I was confident i had solved the problem and restarted the laptop

I was horrified to find this solution had not worked and the laptop continued to go haywire with programs opening and closing and even losing the use of the keyboard

The laptop was also constantly restarting and when i tried to enter my passwords to unlock it was saying they were incorrect

At that point i was considering taking it to a technician

It then dawned on me that someone possibly had control of it and had my passwords, hence all the disruption

As i could not sign in i put 'forgot my password ' , and struggled to change it with everything going on

I did manage this and once in proceeded to change all my passwords to my mail, google, etc, as many as i could

When i restarted the laptop to my relief everything was back to normal, and the laptop had speeded up and up to this point i have had no problems

I can only assume the hacker had lost control and could not get back in

So i can only stress if you have a hint of a similar problem try changing your passwords before anything else and before trying other solutions or taking it to a tech

I will now be changing my passwords on a regular basis