Hey all, need some troubleshooting advice...
I built a computer last year for Mom, decent rig running Win 10, Asrock motherboard, an SSD and fairly standard other stuff. Recently, a family member (male, 30 or so) moved in due to life hardships. Every since he began using the computer, it has been acting up. At a point in the last 3 weeks, I suggested to Mom setting up his own account on the system and did so, hopefully not too late, but apparently so. At that time, I did flash her BIOS to the latest version, and it was working fine after that.
At any rate, Mom calls up early this week and her mouse doesn't work, so I go over and she is right... the WIRED usb Logitech mouse isn't moving the pointer, though it lights up underneath. I tried moving the mouse to another usb port, same problem. I managed to fumble through a couple reboots via the keyboard, and that is when things got even more weird. Trying to move around in the device manager looking for failed hardware, the tab key caused the window's background to flash from white to black alternately.
Another reboot, and I attempted to access the BIOS menus... no go, the delete key nor the F8 key would allow access and the computer while powering up seems non-functional. I almost suspect the motherboard might be hosed, but not ready to gut it yet without further exploration.
Now, this nephew "claims" that his wife's family is tracking him via the internet, his cell phone and has some evidence to back this up. At the last house he stay at (his sister), all the electronics exhibit weird behavior and issues after he stayed at that location. I want to believe him, and he even told me that family sent him a video of him taken through the cell phone camera unknown to him, and corroborated by his sister who saw the video. Seems like too much of a tinfoil hat scenario to me, and he may have mental health issues being as paranoid as he is.
Bottom line, he has used this computer on the admin account, the computer is hosed and I'm not sure what is the best method moving forward to fix it. Can a virus from a questionable site hose the bios? If it won't boot or allow bios access, is a full gutting of the box the only solution? Insight definitely appreciated
I built a computer last year for Mom, decent rig running Win 10, Asrock motherboard, an SSD and fairly standard other stuff. Recently, a family member (male, 30 or so) moved in due to life hardships. Every since he began using the computer, it has been acting up. At a point in the last 3 weeks, I suggested to Mom setting up his own account on the system and did so, hopefully not too late, but apparently so. At that time, I did flash her BIOS to the latest version, and it was working fine after that.
At any rate, Mom calls up early this week and her mouse doesn't work, so I go over and she is right... the WIRED usb Logitech mouse isn't moving the pointer, though it lights up underneath. I tried moving the mouse to another usb port, same problem. I managed to fumble through a couple reboots via the keyboard, and that is when things got even more weird. Trying to move around in the device manager looking for failed hardware, the tab key caused the window's background to flash from white to black alternately.
Another reboot, and I attempted to access the BIOS menus... no go, the delete key nor the F8 key would allow access and the computer while powering up seems non-functional. I almost suspect the motherboard might be hosed, but not ready to gut it yet without further exploration.
Now, this nephew "claims" that his wife's family is tracking him via the internet, his cell phone and has some evidence to back this up. At the last house he stay at (his sister), all the electronics exhibit weird behavior and issues after he stayed at that location. I want to believe him, and he even told me that family sent him a video of him taken through the cell phone camera unknown to him, and corroborated by his sister who saw the video. Seems like too much of a tinfoil hat scenario to me, and he may have mental health issues being as paranoid as he is.
Bottom line, he has used this computer on the admin account, the computer is hosed and I'm not sure what is the best method moving forward to fix it. Can a virus from a questionable site hose the bios? If it won't boot or allow bios access, is a full gutting of the box the only solution? Insight definitely appreciated