Virus/Recovery Question

My brother-in-law (DUH) got duped into allowing a scammer online access to his Windows 11 laptop. They got some banking info and attempted a couple of Amazon gift card purchases but those efforts were thwarted. The perpetrator changed the login pins and basically locked them out of the machine. I could wipe it clean and install a new OS (Windows 11 Pro) and all the drivers, but there is a document folder that was on his desktop that they would like to retreive. I have pulled the M2 SSD Drive out of the system. My question is, can I us an external M2 SSD reader to safely access and copy this file to a clean system or USB drive?

See if you can run third party antivirus software on the file(s).

And enter into virus total.

ChiefBottleWash said:

can I us an external M2 SSD reader to safely access and copy this file to a clean system or USB drive?

Click to expand...

Welcome to Eleven Forum.


The risk is that the file you want to grab may be infected, and might then infect whatever computer is reading that file.

***** If it was me, I'd clean install Windows and start using 3rd party backup software. *****




Here's some things that you may find useful...

i would boot into Ubuntu from a USB flash drive and see if the wanted files are available.

Image, video and most office documents carry very little risk of compromise. File types to be cautious of include any macro enabled office docs (extensions ending in m), PDFs and exe, or dll files. You should be safe to copy them over, but I would also recommend scanning them prior to opening.

Are you struggling with a virus on your Windows machine? In this video, i demonstrate how to leverage Linux to effectively remove viruses and restore your system's health.

This system was taken over (or given control of) and the laptop is on it's last leg from battery bloat/overheating bad enough to deform the keypad. It is also 7+ years old. It will be properly disposed of eventually. My only interest is trying to get a documents folder off of the now removed M2 SSD. I don't want to risk causing an issue with my clean sytem, if it is too risky, we will give up on recovery of the document folder. I run Bitdefender on my personal systems. I have this external reader. Amazon.com

As you don't run any executable from the infected drive, you will be okay, and you can scan the recovered files with virustotal.