Your laptop came with restore option...cd/DVDs or restore image in your hard drive. Or if you bought media directly, use the win 7 cd to reinstall Windows. This is best because you don't have to worry about the bloat ware that comes with the restore options that came with your branded laptop. It is drastic, but not a bad solution. Recommended if you've tried some of the other suggestions and get no improvement.
Eh? Absolutely not. Since you mentioned that.... ______________ If you reformat, don't use the existing recovery partition! It most likely has random bloatware you don't need, don't want, and that does more overall harm than good simply by existing. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7 Download a fresh windows 7 ISO from Microsoft and make a bootable USB stick or burn it to a CD/DVD. ... The installation media isn't important - Microsoft will let you download that for free. The windows key is what really matters. That's for the product activation. ... Most likely, your laptop has a windows activation key embedded in the BIOS and you don't have to worry about it at all. ... Just in case, though, you can extract the key using third party software, or (possibly) find it somewhere on the laptop's exterior. ______________ Edit: Double checking myself, it seems windows 7 laptops are not so likely to have the key embedded in the BIOS like more modern laptops do. So make absolutely sure you find that key on the exterior of your laptop or extract it from the OS before you do anything.
Those windows 10 update might be annoying but that's what protecting your information. Windows 7 is no longer supported. Unless you love malware, ransomeware, all kind of wares and viruses.
Apple products and mobile devices in general tend to receive much less malware simply because they're not big enough targets. For the same reason taken to an extreme, some linux blends and even less common OS softwares are essentially virus-proof. ..... this doesn't mean they're actually more secure, just that no one is likely to program viruses for them. Popular operating systems can technically benefit from the same "protection" as they age. Windows XP, for example, is a lot less likely to be the target OS of a modern virus programmer than Windows 7, 8 or 10, despite its long-running popularity. ... Windows 7, likewise, will gain some measure of protection simply from becoming more and more obsolete as time goes on. At some point, it may be more "secure" than even the most modern, up-to-date OS. .. Or so says me, anyway, and I'm not known for accurate analysis of reality.
If you think Windows XP isn't a target, think again. http://www.nationalcash.com/blog/are-you-still-using-windows-xp-as-your-atm-operating-system/ Well, yeah it does. Everything collects your information nowadays. The toilet you use, your shoes, your schoolbag and most importantly, your headphones and earphones. Mainstream support has ended but it will still receive security updates. Well, I guess Windows 7 is more viable.
The whole point of what I just said is that viruses have to be targeted. ATM software is a *very* specific target and has nothing to do with the average XP user.
Well yeah. You're right. But those hackers would still try their best to find zeroday. If they ever find it and decide to exploit it. It's a GG for normal users.
I love how you just said that like "zeroday" is some specific thing that will break everything. All that actually means is that Microsoft won't be aware of the vulnerability - which actually won't last long at all, and at that point it'll stop being a zero day vulnerability and just become something no one can be arsed to fix. Exploits usually aren't a free ticket to do whatever the hell you want. Rather, they allow you to accomplish specific things. Even if someone discovers completely new exploits for XP, they may not actually be that harmful to the average end user at all. Besides, as I keep saying, a virus has to be targeted. A virus designed to target vulnerabilities in ATM software is extremely likely to do jack shit on a PC, and even if vulnerabilities that can be used on normal XP users are found in the process, it's unlikely relevant virus software will be written to take advantage. But, whatever. Let's say some bored fuck does put something together that takes advantage of a new vulnerability in consumer XP. ... They're then unlikely to distribute that virus on a large scale. Even if they're so fucking bored they DO want to distribute their new XP virus to every computer in the world hoping to get lucky, they also have to find a method to do so. Humans have "herd immunity" to disease. That means disease can't spread between people because they're immune or highly resistant to the disease, so it gets stuck with nowhere to go and no way to spread to people that *are* vulnerable. ... Likewise, the fancy new XP virus will bounce off modern operating systems and server software like a dropped packet. Wanting to distribute it will be easier said than done, and at some point this hacker has to realize he has better shit to do with his life. But, hey. Maybe he's stubborn. So he does find a way to distribute his new virus to XP systems. ... Some people still using XP are affected and that sucks. Then XP fanboys find out how it works and patch together support for it themselves. Virus resolved. Now it's a waiting game to see how long it takes someone to come up with something new. Maybe that'll happen, maybe it never will. Meanwhile, modern OS'es have had three dozen vulnerability scares in as many days, because those are where the real money is. The point is that you are *less likely* to be targeted by a virus when using XP. If you are, then that sucks... but that's still better than having been the target of a much larger number of attacks on popular OS software.
for all you windows haters out there, there is actually a great version of windows 10 called LTSB that only updates security stuff and ignores windows store/cortana and office stuff, also it lets you decide when to update....only problem is that its volume sale only cuz they hate their customers.