Currently the den has felt more like a triage center for computer than a place of gaming and merriment. A few days ago my desktop gets some spyware on it. By "my desktop gets" I mean that I was browsing on the seedier side of the internet, where I knew I really shouldn't be going, and ended up clicking on a dialog box. I'm pretty sure I said "no" to whatever it was that popped up, but I don't think that mattered. "System Tools 2001" stealth-installed and then proceeded to "Scan" my computer. Eventually the system is unusable. I'm able to get it removed by booting into safe mode and installing malwarebytes.
Still, I wasn't completely satisfied that Squirrel( yes all computers in the house have a name, as they should). So I set to work backing up and reformatting the system, just to be sure. As the reinstall is progressing, I work on Fiance's computer. I decide that its defenses need some bolstering so I proceed to grab a "few" anti-spyware/malware/firewall programs. Get those installed, a few quick scans. I fire up WoW and merrily quest. Everything is fine for a few hours until I switch to my lowbie mage. I start to quest and BAM Blue Screen of Death. I find that odd, but I chalk it up to doing too many things at once ( I was still scanning as I was playing). I fire it up again and start to quest, 10 minutes later another blue screen. I disable the newly installed programs, but same result.
At this point Squirrel is back up and running, I copy over the WoW folder from the backup and try playing there. Almost instantly I get a blue-screen. Wow... that was bad. As I'm googling to find a way to remidy this, it blue-screens even while NOT in WoW.
I think I'm going to reformat Squirrel yet again, and this time not install anything but the bare essentials. I'm pretty sure its just software. If it was just one computer failing then I could see that it might possibly be hardware, but both at once?
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