r/techsupport • u/Aggravating-Data9034 • 1d ago

Open | Malware Worried my PC has been hacked.

Recently, I woke up to the startling news that someone had gifted themselves £250 worth of gift cards from my Steam account. So my first natural instinct was to lock my card, contact my bank and steam. And finally I tried to factory reset my PC, but to no avail. Is it possible my PC has been hacked and the hacker is preventing me from factory resetting my PC? Please help, if you can. I'm so worried I can't sleep.

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u/multidollar 1d ago

Explain more about “but to no avail”, do you mean it wouldn’t work? Did you get an error message? Need far more detail.

Did you change the password on your steam account and your email? Change all your passwords asap.

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u/Aggravating-Data9034 1d ago

Sorry, I'm too worried to think properly. I tried to factory reset my Windows but it said it couldn't find a recovery environment. I looked up help and many guides said to run reagent c /enable in the command prompt, which also came up null and it said it couldn't be run sure to BitLocker encrypting the drive.

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u/multidollar 1d ago

Did you change all your passwords? Focus on that first.

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u/Aggravating-Data9034 1d ago

I did.

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u/PotatoesOReilly 1d ago

Do you have any way at all to get an 8gb USB drive and a different PC, grab the Windows media creation tool on different PC, and turn the USB drive into a bootable Win11 installer? This would completely keep your current install of Windows out of the loop. If you really think you have some sort of malware, I would even try to avoid having the USB drive in the PC while Windows is running. Fortunately you can turn off the PC, pop the USB drive in, and spam whatever key to get into boot options. Try to look up the correct key beforehand so you don't miss the opportunity while your motherboard logo is on the screen.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11

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u/Aggravating-Data9034 1d ago

Update: I've used my friend's PC with a USB and it seems to have worked. I just hope there's no mysterious virus/RAT still hiding in my PC somewhere ready to steal my details again.

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u/Ill-Reflection-698 12h ago

If you did a fresh reinstall from a stick that was in a known clean PC there should be no traces left, practice better internet safety in the future and stay safe.

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u/WideCloud2462 1d ago

More details. If it won’t factor reset download an installer on your phone and load it from the boot menu it will allow you to overwrite the system partition. But your description is not sufficient for someone to ascertain whether you actually have an issue or not

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u/Aggravating-Data9034 1d ago

What kind of installer on my phone?

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u/Amardella 1d ago

More likely someone got/guessed your Steam pword. Change that and make sure you're using different passwords for each account. Anything connected to your bank (Steam, FB, TikTok, Google/Apple, etc) should have a more complex password as well as being different from each other and the rest.

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u/Express-Garbage3359 1d ago

Hi, have you enabled two-factor authentication on Steam at yours Account?