I am confused.

Just reinstall the windows immediately. If it is Windows 10, then license key is actually tied to the hardware and you don’t need license key. If it is Windows 7 or 8 or something like that, you might need key to activate. Still you can use it for a trial period.

Don’t gamble your data for Windows. Original keys are available at lower price in many retailers site.

So, let me tell you something.

When you are connected to the WiFi, you can type https://192.168.1.1 (This is Class C Private Address - Accessible only when you are connected to Wifi) to connect to your WiFi Router. You can login to the router with the credentials - admin / admin or admin / password. It should be something very simple.

When you connect to the Internet, Your ISP will give an IP to your router. Your router has 2 Networks - Side A (Your Local Network : Router & Your Devices) and Side B (Your Internet: Router & ISP). So, you should have IP address when your router is connected to IP Address. If someone knows the IP Address and if Your router is configured to serve webpage even on 0.0.0.0 , then anyone on the internet can put your IP in their browser, prefixed with https:// they can access your router.

If credentials are simple, it is not that difficult. So, now how can he know the IP address. Probably the game should have displayed it on chat or during connecting to the game servers. If you are on VPN, then this is impossible unless your VPN also is totally insecure.

Your IP addresses change on every router restart unless you actually requested static IP from ISP. All ISPs would give only dynamic IPs and static IP Allocation is much costlier process. So, I am like 99% sure that you don’t have static IP. If you have restarted your router, don’t worry. Whoever did that cannot do that again.

Basic Change:

• Change the password of your router as soon as possible.
• Mask your IP Address using Steam configuration or Game configuration if available - Refer here : https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1433-AD20-F11D-B71E
• Using VPN would slow down your network performance - A gentle disclaimer.

“changed my dns” :

Okay - A Basic understanding of Internet is needed. Every website is actually running on some computer in some part of the world. So, browser is trying to access the service in that computer which is serving your request. If you type, google.com , it would actually go to 172.217.164.100 in backend. Every computer, when connected to internet, will be given a Public IP Address. Every other computer in the world can connect to that system using that IP Address. Basically, IP Address is the identity card and is unique at any point of time (No 2 internet facing devices can have same public address at same time).

But, there are 1000s and 1000s of websites. You cannot remember IP Address of every site. So, the website domain names came into existence. It is like phone book. You know 1000 people and you cannot remember all their phone numbers. But, you can remember the name. So, you store the name and number in your contact book and when you search for the name, number would be retrieved. Same applies for DNS.

DNS is like phone book for internet. There are many DNS providers in the world. When you type google.com, your computer will ask router “who is this google.com” and your router would goto the DNS and ask “Tell the IP address of the google.com” and DNS would tell “Google.com is at 172.217.164.100”. And router will tell your computer that this is the IP Address. Then computer would make the request to the IP Address. Now, if router is fed with wrong DNS address, router would go and ask the DNS server IP where DNS is not running. It won’t give any response and computer won’t get any response. And computer will says “DNS DXDOMAIN NOT AVAILABLE OR DNS PROBE ENDED”. All applications would talk with domain name and not with IP Address. So, if DNS Breaks down, everything would break down.

But, you can avoid this.

DNS can be set at 2 Levels : Router Level and Computer Level. If you have DNS at computer level, then don’t worry on anything at router level. Even if someone messes up, it would be much easier for you gain access back.

You guys know how apparently companies like Facebook and other social media apps sell their users data for profit?

No - They never sell the data. I am not related to any of these organisations, but please refrain from making such false statements. Selling user data is never practised by any social media nor big technology companies. If people choose to believe or not, here is the truth. Their Data is NEVER SOLD by any SOCIAL MEDIA companies at any point of time.

Selling user data is actually against law and there’s no market for that. If somebody does, it is a crime and it can be reported.

This amount of Information is very low that I can comment about it. There are various reasons for various things you told: Let us go one by one:

“I’ve noticed that whenever i connect to my WiFi my cpu immediately clocks to a 100%”

• Possible Cause: Malware / Adware
• Possible Cause: Driver Issue

“when I try to open certain folders like the programme data file,it also immediately closes down”

• Possible Cause: File system Corruption, Explorer Crash
• Possible Cause: Malware

“this app can’t run on your pc”

• Architecture of the Windows is differen (x86 vs x64)

Solutions:

If you are okay with losing Apps

1. Backup your Data
2. Reinstall Windows
3. Reinstall All drivers properly.

If you are not okay with losing Apps:

1. Backup your data
2. Download Boot Scan Tool from Any Antivirus Providers and perform a boot scan (Deep scan)
3. Install all drivers properly from Windows Update and Official Hardware Provider Site (Do not use Driver Packs or 3rd Party Applications)
4. Perform SFC Scan on C Drive and Boot Drive and Windows Installation Volume
5. Personal DISM Fix on your Windows.

Now things are clear:

First let us know something about Active Time.

Disk Active Time is a measure of how much time the disk spent servicing I/O requests. A slower disk will require more disk active time to service the same number of I/Os as a faster disk.

Disk active time is the time the HDD is working. The higher the time/percentage, the more you utilise the HDD.
If you hit 99%, you are actually bottle-necked by the read/write performance of your HDD.

You need to know about multiple things.

• If Active time is 100%, your disk is trying to service request all the time.
• It can be because - either one of the following is happening:
  • Your disk has become so weak that it needs to work 100% to service even basic request.
  • You have a good disk - but, You have so many background processes that it is choking your disk very badly.
  • You have a good disk - and You are actually infected by some malware or some virus.

Open Task Manager (Press Ctrl + Shift + Escape) and goto performance Tab. There, you should see a column called as “Disk”. When you click on the column header, you should be able to sort the processes which are using the disk. From the list, identify if there are any processes which are unknown or shady. If there is any, remove it.

If there is no shady process, I suspect that your disk might have gone too weak to support this IO. How do you test it? I find following articles too clear:

• https://superuser.com/questions/130143/how-to-measure-disk-performance-under-windows (Little Clear)
• https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/disk-i-o-test-windows.html#:~:text=Execute%20the%20following%20steps%20and,Sets%2C%20and%20choose%20User%20Defined. (Perfect Way)

So, for you HDD Model, you would actually get technical stats and check if the current stats is as same as the one in the stat. If there is more than 50% to 60% difference, I suspect that disk might be weak. But Hold on. I am not telling that it is surely weak.

Usually, if there is another process totally bugging your disk, this stat test will definitely give you a false negative report. So, how do I usually test HDD status is:

• I make a bootable Ubuntu Drive or Cent OS Drive
• From the Linux, I boot and I execute the tests mentioned here : https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-linux-unix-test-disk-performance-with-dd-command/

So, Let me not confuse further:

Following can be causes:

1. Virus or Malware - Check other thread or Malware Guide of this Subreddit and run a scan. If that doesn’t fix anything, go to step 2.
2. Suspicious Background Process
   1. Try to identify the processes. If you can, remove them.
   2. If there’s no problem with data, Reinstall the Windows Fresh and Check if active Time is 100%. If fresh installed Windows has 100% Active, you have bad hard disk. If you are concerned with data, go for next point
   3. Create a Live Bootable Linux Utility and check performance with DD. If DD gives negative feedback, it is your HDD. If Linux gives good result, most probably your Windows is infected.
3. HDD Failure
   1. Upgrade to SSD
   2. (or) Get a new HDD
   3. (or) Your might have connected HDD in wrong interface.

Disk is 100% - Clear me this:

• Is your storage 100% full?
• Is your disk being utilised 100%?

Storage Full:

The following action would change nothing if your storage is 100% full. Literally, it would change nothing. Y

My PC disk is always at 100% usage no matter what I do. I’ve deleted temp files, ran disk cleanup, cleared cache on google. What else can I do?

You have files which you need to clean up. Windows 10 and Windows 11 has something called as Storage Sense in Windows Settings, which would tell you what files you have and which constitutes the majority. Work on that, dude.

Understand this:

• A Drive has multiple partition.
• A Partition has multiple volume.

Now, if you have 128 GB drive. If you completely wipe the disk, your 128 GB is totally blank. Now, if you create a partition for 10 GB, you still have 110 GB Blank. But, Windows will list only the created partition.

If you create 2 partitions in same (pen)Drive, when you plug it in, you would see actually 2 drives in This PC (They are actually partitions).

Now, for example: If you have 128 GB pen drive and if you create windows 11 bootable drive, you would see either 16 GB or max 32 GB only. Rest 80+ GB wouldn’t even be available to see. But, you can create partition and can use it. Just that, make sure don’t create Primary Partition again. It should be simple Volume. If you have 2 Primary partition, You might actually confuse the system.

​

if there is a way I could use that space while keeping the pendrive bootable.

So, the answer is YES.

Got a windows security alert that there was a severe threat on my pc. When I looked at it, it was a file with trojan in the title. Very spooky. When I let windows security run the necessary actions, it did another scan and then three such files showed up.

So, it warned you. And You allowed it. Hmm.

​

It did another scan and then three such files showed up. I told windows security to delete them, ran another scan twice and it hasn’t found any new threat.

Not completely. Try Kaspersky Rescue Disk and Try scanning once.

If somebody is using your computer, it cannot be via browser. I’ll tell you honestly. For the screen-sharing to take place, you have to hook into system services, which is completely impossible with browser (as it can allow only the basic controls when shared).

There’s definitely something else which is happening. It is either Remote Assistance or some application which is allowing screen sharing & control. If you are using MacOS, this is pretty damn straight forward and find the app and disable it. For Windows, Umm. There’s something difficult.

My Suggestion is:

If you are concerned about Data & Apps:

• Don’t connect the computer again back to the network.
• Download a MSRT (Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool) from another PC and run it here.
• Download Kaspersky Free Rescue Disk Tool in Another PC and make a boot-able drive and perform a scan (https://www.kaspersky.com/downloads/free-rescue-disk) on your system which is actually infected.

This method doesn’t guarantee you a 100% cleanup.

If you are not concerned about Data & Apps:

• Make a bootable drive with Windows 10 Image and beat the shit outta your computer by re-installing the Whole Windows once again.

​

but I realized that I didn’t have any control over my mouse. I then saw that the mouse clicked on the address bar and typed in something like “edge:://settings”.

Ok - tell me clearly. Does the mouse movement looks like human’s movement or does it look programmatically done? If it’s humans kinda movement, you have a backdoor. If it was so programmatically, this is simply a program written with JS / Python with Selenium to open a backdoor and you caught it before anything can happen. So, you are at least safe to an extent.

BTW, you want to just clean or understand what happened in the computer?