I got a malware infestation. Not a terrible one, just a browser hijacker, but one that proved really difficult to keep from re-installing itself. I decided to revert to a stored restore point. The system looked like it was hung, but I went off and did something else for a few hours, and it had finished. I logged on and looked for broken things.
I didn’t have to look far. Both Firefox and Chrome were damaged (but not IE). I reinstalled them.
Office worked, but said there was something preventing it from updating itself.
There are two Office repair options:
I tried the Quick Repair first. It didn’t work. I then ran the Online Repair. That took a while. When it was over, Office was unregistered:
I skulked around and found the Microsoft account I’d used to load Office in the first place. I checked and made sure it knew about the installation on this machine. Then I tried to register it using the same credentials. It rejected them.
I scratched my head and downloaded a new Office installation right on top of the old one. That worked. I lost no email messages, and all my customizations were intact. In the future, I think this is a better option than a web repair.
This is a special case of a image restoration breaking app licensing. In the past three or four years, I’ve never done a image restore that wasn’t in the end more trouble than just a clean OS install and manual program installs.
Interesting post. I separate/sandbox a lot of my workflow, so I may have my banking in a separate virtual machine with a separate internet connection. You don’t have to be as excessive as me but providing you have some kind of separation e.g. photographs stored on another computer, then formatting and reinstalling windows shouldn’t take too long (assuming you have SSDs).
Quite often, if I get something malicious on a computer I will simply format and start again. I’ve gotten quicker at setting up a computer over the years as well. Plus in the event a friend/family member/client needs help, I’m more familiar with the operating system. If something is more malicious than I realised, this approach has a greater chance at removing it too.
Ultimately, for me, it’s about time and so although formatting may sound drastic to some, it’s considerably quicker for me than playing whackamole. In your case, it seems you got off lightly. Windows in the past used to be somewhat degradable in my opinion too i.e if you installed it and then five years had kept that original install, the registry might be a mess or things wouldn’t run as smoothly. In that regards, I think it’s improved.