Checking for malware/virus on second hand laptop?

Noneoftheabove

For the overly paranoid, what is good procedure for checking for malware/virus on a second hand Win10 laptop? Anything I should be looking for or avoid doing before connecting to home network?

Thanks!

Shadowfire

I wouldn't worry about much as far as your network goes. Grab Malwarebytes and let it scan, see what it comes up with.

It might be worthwhile to wipe the drive and start from scratch though, just for the sake of the previous owner's privacy.

Hevach

I agree with Shadowfire - Check for boot sector infections or rootkits (something like TDSSkiller) which are rare but can persist past a full restore, then do said system restore. Will be simpler for security and privacy, both for you and the previous owner.

I wouldn't worry about connecting to your network. Generally speaking, home network security is every man for himself, big difference form a business network where you're likely to have a lot of identical systems and finite payroll hours to secure them all, home networks are full of different systems running different platforms doing different things and most of them don't need constant attention. So you secure each device on its own (including the access point) and if a compromised system connects it won't ruin things for everyone.

Inquisitor77

The answer is always Nuke from Orbit

Noneoftheabove

The previous owner claims to have wiped everything and reinstalled Win10 and a few basic utilities like home office etc. So far it looks clean to me. I don't really want to wipe everything over again without my own copy of Win10. Not keen on buying a $300 OS. (That is the going rate for Micro$ux, right?)

Hevach

Windows 10 install files can be had for free if you have the key, which some utilities can extract from the registry.

However, what you say is reassuring on a level. Still run a rootkit check, since the wipe wouldn't have caught a lot of them the way they work, and definitely get a good malware scan like Malwarebytes (warning: their free trial and paid version started interfering with antivirus, including Microsoft's pretty decent in-house one. Malwarebytes is still not a replacement for antivirus but a supplement, the free version is a great supplement though).

Noneoftheabove

Thank you Shadowfire and Hevach!