Running Win 7 Pro and have been using only Microsoft default protections.
Just downloaded Malwarebytes trial and ran full scan. The only thing at all that showed up was some old serial port test program that I'd downloaded a few years ago but hadn't used for ages. So I let the tool delete it even though I'm 99 percent sure it was safe.
But looking at the default options selected I noticed that as a default Malwarebytes does not scan for rootkits. So I enabled that and ran the scan again, and it detected 2:
Rootkit.Pihar.c.mbr on sector #5 on volume #1
Rootkit.Pihar.c.mbr on sector #0 on volume #1
I have no symptoms of any sort of infection. No random reboots, no odd popups, no BSOD. I found a list of registry entries typically associated with this MBR infection and found none of them at all. Doing a google search for that rootkit, it looks like most of the discussion is from a few years ago, and most is about trying to recover after botching the MBR removal.
So for now, I'm sitting on it. But my questions are: What are the chances that allowing Malwarebytes to remove the rootkit by clicking "remove selected" will screw things up?
What are the chances that the rootkit is just so very smart that it isn't allowing me or Malwarebytes to see some serious infection by hiding its payloads.
Thanks.
