Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2021 November 12
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November 12[edit]
Erase infected USB stick[edit]
Can one erase a virus infected USB stick so thoroughly that absolutely no copies of the virus remain no matter what tricks have been used to hide it? -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 04:45, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- TBH, given how cheap USB sticks are these days, I'd be tempted to destroy it and buy a new one. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:42, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- My thoughts initially. Probably practically. Not sure I would trust an answer given on the internet but it is an interesting academic question. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 11:09, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- It depends on how the USB stick was compromised to begin with. If it is a stock USB stick, with just dangerous data on a normal file system, just use a rational OS, and reformat it with overwriting (repeated overwriting, if you feel paranoid). But it may be compromised at the hardware level, in which case there probably is nothing you can do on a software level (you could replace the electronics, but eventually you run into a Ship of Theseus situation). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:40, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- Will the normal Windows/MacOS "Format" tool erase all partitions? Including the EFI partition? ApLundell (talk) 16:28, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- Let's say I am stupid. You don't have to convince me, just make me uncomfortable. Who would repeated overwriting do the tricks. Are USB sticks just glorified magnetismi media? -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 17:45, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- Last question first: it's open to debate. They use rewritable flash memory rather than rotating magnetic media and emulate the structure of a hard or even floppy disk. There are two ways to format a rotating hard disk: 1) you can perform a 'soft' or 'quick' format, which just wipes the File Allocation Table (FAT32 or its many equivalents) leaving the encoded data untouched but ready to be overwritten by new files. Or 2) you can perform a 'hard' format which magnetically erases every single sector, either by setting all the bits to zero (standard Windows format utility), or by securely writing random patterns to each sector (specialised 3rd-party app) and the MBR, partition table, boot sectors, EFI thing etc. The same applies to USB sticks but with electronic rather than magnetic technology.
- This latter sort of utility can be found on eg the free Hirens Boot CD The 'Hard Disk Tools' section includes a number of these freeware apps, eg Active Kill Disk, HDD Low Level Format Tool, etc. It hasn't been updated for a few years, and Hirens Boot CD PE has been released with fewer utilities running in a Win 10 Preinstallation Environment (PE). Although I imagine these might be up to the job, there are Pro versions of Active Kill Disk costing $40.
- There are much more expensive proper professional apps; but nothing is absolutely guaranteed. I read somewhere that the CIA can find data that has been 'secure formatted' several times over. Who knows? Since a new 2TB flash drive is around $40 on Amazon I would tend to go with Martin's initial reply to your question. >MinorProphet (talk) 13:45, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- Disks revector bad blocks, so you can never be sure you have overwritten everything stored on the drive. USBs use load leveling, I not sure offhand if they also revector (at the back of my mind there is something about 110% of stated capacity to allow for this). A revectored failed segment is probably not of concern to Cimon Avaro, but would be of interest to the CIA. Load leveling means that you can't be sure which block you are writing to, as so you can't know that you've overwritten all blocks. You need to consider the cost/benefit equation:
£<cost of new stick> vs. £<cost of wiping> + £<damage done if the wipe is unsuccessful>*<chance of this>Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:24, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- Disks revector bad blocks, so you can never be sure you have overwritten everything stored on the drive. USBs use load leveling, I not sure offhand if they also revector (at the back of my mind there is something about 110% of stated capacity to allow for this). A revectored failed segment is probably not of concern to Cimon Avaro, but would be of interest to the CIA. Load leveling means that you can't be sure which block you are writing to, as so you can't know that you've overwritten all blocks. You need to consider the cost/benefit equation:
- It depends on how the USB stick was compromised to begin with. If it is a stock USB stick, with just dangerous data on a normal file system, just use a rational OS, and reformat it with overwriting (repeated overwriting, if you feel paranoid). But it may be compromised at the hardware level, in which case there probably is nothing you can do on a software level (you could replace the electronics, but eventually you run into a Ship of Theseus situation). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:40, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- My thoughts initially. Probably practically. Not sure I would trust an answer given on the internet but it is an interesting academic question. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 11:09, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- Nice bit of pseudocode. I was drawn into IT in the mid-80s after witnessing someone wrestling with an early version of Peter Norton's Utilities and a failing 10MB hard drive on (I think) an original IBM 8086 PC. The screen was chock-full of colour and meaningful, structured information (a bit like that Matrix digital rain moment when – for me – 'code' is revealed as either data or instructions) and I thought, "Wow, there's an entire universe behind that screen - and I want to know all about it." Thus S.M.A.R.T. technology and revectoring bad blocks: and I definitely remember viewing the low-level list of remapped blocks (etc.) on at least one HDD. It might even have been on a brand new disk, which I'm fairly sure came from the factory with a number of unreadable sectors already mapped. I would expect that that list itself can be wiped so it would be difficult to ascertain whether any particular sector had ever contained genuine data or mere nonsense. The red pill vs. the blue pill, if you like. MinorProphet (talk) 20:16, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
Driver update caused lag[edit]
Hello! So after I updated my graphics drivers for my Intel integrated GPU and now all of my programs (besides my browser) are lagging. Anyone know how to fix this? And buying more RAM isn't an option for me right now ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:48, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
- Open System Restore for your version of Windows (for Win 10, Control Panel > Recovery > Open System Restore > Next. Choose a restore point just before you 'upgraded' the graphics drivers. MinorProphet (talk) 01:56, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- Could possibly be that filthy dodgy fan failing to cool the CPU enough (have you fiddled with it?) and it's throttling back the cycles to avoid overheating. Just a thought. NB: There's a well-known phrase or saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The 'latest' drivers often are only released to fix known bugs or to include support for the most recent GPU chips. They may well degrade the performance of older chips. >MinorProphet (talk) 14:41, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- @MinorProphet: I don't think it's the fan that's the issue as I've cleaned it out already. But I do agree it might just be an issue with the latest drivers. I merely updated to the latest drivers to see if it would make the new Minecraft launcher (The Win 10 store one) work and it doesn't. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:46, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Blaze The Wolf: So your real question is, "Why doesn't the Minecraft launcher from the Win 10 store work on my version of Win 10?" All I know is that with Win 10, anything and everything can go wrong and probably will. I'm still on XP Pro SP3. I feel for RedRose. Possible answer: Bide your time. I can almost guarantee that hundreds if not thousands of total techno-geeks with all the social skills of a piece of seaweed, high on Red Bull and with slices of half-eaten 10-day-old pizza scattered around their room with a piss-pot under their chair who last slept 36 hours ago are currently working on this very problem. Do something else for a while, there may be precisely nothing at all you can personally do to make it work. Fancy a game of online Hearts instead? (http://hearts.vex.net/) You can't choose a name anymore thanks to abusive behaviour, so I'll never know if it's you I'm thrashing or someone else. (lol, I'm shit at this game but I love it. Hint: you absolutely have to be able to count which cards from which suits have been played, or you will fail miserably.) MinorProphet (talk) 21:06, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- @MinorProphet: Yep, and they did say the temporary solution is to continue using the old launcher as the bug's already been documented. I am going to wait until it works for me, and then I'll figure out how to restore to before I updated the drivers, if I'm able to as I haven't been regularly creating restore points. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 03:07, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Blaze The Wolf: So your real question is, "Why doesn't the Minecraft launcher from the Win 10 store work on my version of Win 10?" All I know is that with Win 10, anything and everything can go wrong and probably will. I'm still on XP Pro SP3. I feel for RedRose. Possible answer: Bide your time. I can almost guarantee that hundreds if not thousands of total techno-geeks with all the social skills of a piece of seaweed, high on Red Bull and with slices of half-eaten 10-day-old pizza scattered around their room with a piss-pot under their chair who last slept 36 hours ago are currently working on this very problem. Do something else for a while, there may be precisely nothing at all you can personally do to make it work. Fancy a game of online Hearts instead? (http://hearts.vex.net/) You can't choose a name anymore thanks to abusive behaviour, so I'll never know if it's you I'm thrashing or someone else. (lol, I'm shit at this game but I love it. Hint: you absolutely have to be able to count which cards from which suits have been played, or you will fail miserably.) MinorProphet (talk) 21:06, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- @MinorProphet: I don't think it's the fan that's the issue as I've cleaned it out already. But I do agree it might just be an issue with the latest drivers. I merely updated to the latest drivers to see if it would make the new Minecraft launcher (The Win 10 store one) work and it doesn't. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:46, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- Could possibly be that filthy dodgy fan failing to cool the CPU enough (have you fiddled with it?) and it's throttling back the cycles to avoid overheating. Just a thought. NB: There's a well-known phrase or saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The 'latest' drivers often are only released to fix known bugs or to include support for the most recent GPU chips. They may well degrade the performance of older chips. >MinorProphet (talk) 14:41, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
If System Restore is turned on (it is, by default) it automatically creates a restore point every day or so. Well-behaved program/driver installs will also create one - but this is not universal behaviour. Have a look anyway using the above instructions just to see - it won't change anything until it asks "Do you really want to restore the system to such-and-such a date/time?" and you click Yes. Even after the reboot, it should ask whether you want to undo the restore. In my experience, System Restore has always worked - it's been one of the more reliable aspects of Windows since XP. MinorProphet (talk) 12:16, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
- @MinorProphet: Oh neat! I'll have to check that out then. Thanks! ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:22, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
- @MinorProphet: It appears to have failed when I attempted to restore it. Any suggestions on what to do now? ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:14, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Blaze The Wolf: in what way did appear to fail? Can you run through the steps you made, with any error messages etc.? If you can post here, your PC appears to be working to some degree. MinorProphet (talk) 11:23, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- @MinorProphet: I don't always use my home PC to post here. In fact usually I use my school issued chromebook. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:06, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- ANyways, I managed to undo the driver update by simply selecting the downgrade driver option however something else appears to be causing the lag. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:07, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Blaze The Wolf: You have previously asked about lag - is it more noticeable than before? Have you made any other recent changes? If so, I would suggest a restore to an even earlier date, but if System Restore didn't work, that might not be a good idea. There's little more I can do since I am completely unfamiliar with Win 10. By the way (adopts old git tone), I cannot recommend enough that you concentrate on your studies rather than playing Minecraft etc. You have a few short years in which to pass your exams, and your results will almost certainly define your entire future career. Make the best of your time, best of luck. MinorProphet (talk) 14:32, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- @MinorProphet: I've also recently updated Windows 10 however I'm unable to revert to a previous version since I'm not able to go any further back with SYstem Restore anymore. Also I don't mainly play MInecraft and I'm not to the point where I do my exams yet. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:54, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Blaze The Wolf: You have previously asked about lag - is it more noticeable than before? Have you made any other recent changes? If so, I would suggest a restore to an even earlier date, but if System Restore didn't work, that might not be a good idea. There's little more I can do since I am completely unfamiliar with Win 10. By the way (adopts old git tone), I cannot recommend enough that you concentrate on your studies rather than playing Minecraft etc. You have a few short years in which to pass your exams, and your results will almost certainly define your entire future career. Make the best of your time, best of luck. MinorProphet (talk) 14:32, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- ANyways, I managed to undo the driver update by simply selecting the downgrade driver option however something else appears to be causing the lag. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:07, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- @MinorProphet: I don't always use my home PC to post here. In fact usually I use my school issued chromebook. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:06, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Blaze The Wolf: in what way did appear to fail? Can you run through the steps you made, with any error messages etc.? If you can post here, your PC appears to be working to some degree. MinorProphet (talk) 11:23, 17 November 2021 (UTC)