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Disabling your external backup drive sounds good as it will be isolated, like in an isolation ward in hospital. But, I guess the risk of infection returns when you re-enable it, making it prone to whatever infections that may be on your system.

I agree with Paul’s question if you have run AV/Malware scans. I would suggest running some free scans from major antivirus providers such as Norton, TrendMicro, ESET, etc. They are free for a scan. Also I would investigate with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.

Thanks john181818, I downloaded and ran AV/Malware, it found two PUPS (potentially unwanted programs) but no ransomware.
now I can rest assured and browse around the world in peace lol. :p

I don’t think I have ransomware installed on my system Paul thanks for reading. It happened 2 years back and since then I have formatted all drives on my multiboot system to add a new drive for Windows preview 10.

cheers, Norman

Just read my emails, about this ransomware topic, this explains why I am a bit late in joining this discussion. Anyways, after being caught once by the ransomeware criminals. It took me a week to get my PC back on form. From then on I have always kept my browser window smaller than the maximum using the minimise button then drag to resize the browser window smaller than my screen. Somehow this prevents the nasty ransomware from locking up my system, so I can right click on the taskbar to choose start Task Manager then click on the Apps Tab, click on the nasty bad website and End Task. Works every time!
Since then, Ransomware have tried umpteen times to lock me out, to no avail – poor suckers!

I guess this is similar to a sandbox idea but less complicated. And a lot easier than doing lengthy clean ups. Also cheaper than paying for anti ransomware kits.

Has anyone mentioned Michael Vinthers ‘Image Analyzer’ from Meesoft. It crops edits and resizes, loads quicker than grease lightning, it’s free and accepts all common formats.
As for flood fills and pasting one image into another. I still use good good old MsPaint copied from Windows XP to Windows 7 then right click on Paint and opened the properties compatibility mode to set it to run on Windows XP mode.

I need an image processing program to clean up scanned images, mainly of printed matter. I’m looking for the following properties/capabilities:

[*]Reasonable price (or free)
[*]Small, loads fast
[*]Modest learning curve
[*]Can talk to a scanner with a 32-bit driver
[*]Can handle JPG, PNG, and other common image formats
[*]Can adjust brightness, contrast, color balance, etc.
[*]Can change color depth, resolution, and canvas size
[*]Can do flood fills
[*]Lets me paste one image into another and move it to achieve an accurate “splice”

I used to use an old version of Paintshop Pro for this, but it will not run under Windows 7. I bought the current version and found that it has morphed into a Photoshop clone: huge, slow, loaded with features I don’t need, impossible to use without a book.