- Joined
- Jan 14, 2016
- Messages
- 51
- Reaction score
- 6
- Points
- 8
- Location
- Santa Cruz Mtns foothills, Cupertino, CA
- Your Mac's Specs
- Mac Mini 16GB/1TB, two 4K monitors/Mojave, Mac Book/Catalina, 2nd Mini in TV room for games/surfing
I normally never click on anything remotely suspicious, but suddenly I’m having serious issues:
1) After a restart, I’m getting two popups, “Mac Tuneup Pro” and “Advanced Mac Tuneup”. Both run at the same time but out of sync with voices warning that my Mac has issues -- "click here to clean up." The latter installs an icon on the menu bar and I can’t get rid of it. Naturally I don’t click on anything.
2) Safari has gotten really bad: it keeps opening new tabs urging me to contact what they call “Apple Support” with a toll-free number and a case number. Further, any time I click on an open tab I get popups from “MyCouponsmart” telling me my Norton subscription (what?) has expired, click here to renew. Naturally I don’t click on anything here either.
3) I don’t normally use Chrome but I launched it to see how it would act and it was unusable -- every time I clicked on a bookmark the page would open and then be overwritten by a Yahoo-looking page (this might be my home page on Chrome, couldn’t tell for sure, maybe bogus). Dumped out of that one.
What is the best way to use Time Machine to clean up this mess? I can go back to yesterday when the machine was fine, but which files should I select to commence the RESTORE? Can I exclude my photos and music files?
Most important, will Time Machine be able to restore the whole system the way it was without the infection or am I going to need a 3rd-party utility or am I going to have to clear the disk and reinstall Mojave, and if so, how do I do that?
Thanks in advance for your help.
1) After a restart, I’m getting two popups, “Mac Tuneup Pro” and “Advanced Mac Tuneup”. Both run at the same time but out of sync with voices warning that my Mac has issues -- "click here to clean up." The latter installs an icon on the menu bar and I can’t get rid of it. Naturally I don’t click on anything.
2) Safari has gotten really bad: it keeps opening new tabs urging me to contact what they call “Apple Support” with a toll-free number and a case number. Further, any time I click on an open tab I get popups from “MyCouponsmart” telling me my Norton subscription (what?) has expired, click here to renew. Naturally I don’t click on anything here either.
3) I don’t normally use Chrome but I launched it to see how it would act and it was unusable -- every time I clicked on a bookmark the page would open and then be overwritten by a Yahoo-looking page (this might be my home page on Chrome, couldn’t tell for sure, maybe bogus). Dumped out of that one.
What is the best way to use Time Machine to clean up this mess? I can go back to yesterday when the machine was fine, but which files should I select to commence the RESTORE? Can I exclude my photos and music files?
Most important, will Time Machine be able to restore the whole system the way it was without the infection or am I going to need a 3rd-party utility or am I going to have to clear the disk and reinstall Mojave, and if so, how do I do that?
Thanks in advance for your help.