My sister's boss's laptop was acting up so I was asked to work on it. Turned it on for the first time and it's well and truly borked. Has quite a few things installed that she really shouldn't have installed and they won't let me uninstall anything or open google chrome. It's a windows 7 laptop so instead of having to backup all important files (I don't really have the equipment to do it properly at the moment) and doing a full wipe and re-install, I was thinking to get a Linux live-CD and basically subvert the programs and tear them out manually. I was hoping to get opinions on the best software to get to do this, and find out if this is even a viable way to do it.
Wipe it wil active kill disk ... a free drive wiper and reinstall ... or you can try and clean it using Malwarebytes and doing boot time scans with the antivirus of choice ... your call
..."and they won't let me uninstall anything or open google chrome."
This is when you hand the laptop back and say, "I don't have time, you either let me do what I need to do to fix it, or take it somewhere else".
Any linux live environment will let you do just about anything you'll need - you can also set up various live environments as a persistent-usb; meaning that you can store files directly onto a flash drive or attached storage depending on what "equipment" you have laying around.
Because it generally takes less time to do a virus scan via linux, and delete quarantine/rougue software/malware than it takes to backup files and reinstall. The old adage, time = money and whatnot.
Ok, so turns out all they wanted to save were some family pictures. Those have been backed up now so I'm just gonna do a fresh install. Do you guys think I need to worry about sanitizing the disk or just do a fresh windows install and call it good?