Gearing Commander locked up my pc with warning..UPDATE

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2022 3:19 am

Tonight I thought I'd try Gearing Commander. I read some old posts on how to use it. There was a link in the post I clicked on and Gearing Commander page came up, I was on their site. There was one post about selecting my bike from the menu and it would fill in the information. I couldn't find where this was located so I went long hand and filled everything out.

When I selected 'continue', my pc emitted a warning beep, then the screen locked up and it began saying my pc was locked up, I had to call them to unlock my pc, something about my IP address, blah, blah...

I powered down my pc, unplugged it and my router and let them sit for a few minutes. Hooked everything up, powered it up and I'm back to normal. I use Windows 10 and it's firewall and virus detect. There was no warnings from it. Everything is back to normal.

Anyone else have this problem with the site? Thanks.

MB-5 Joined: Sep 12, 2021 Posts: 12 Location: Cape Cod

Sounds like the site has been hacked with a kind of malware intended to get you to call a scam support center, likely in India.

Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2022 10:43 pm

Today I went to Google and put in Gearing Commander. Out of the responses, I got one for a YouTube demo for it. I watched it and realized I probably used a hacked version last night. Last night, I couldn't use the drop down menu and select a bike already in the database.

I went back and started Gearing Commander from www.gearingcommander.com and could access the bikes in the database. I went to Add A Bike and at that screen I did notice a difference. On the page last night it had a 'Continue' button to click at the bottom(that initiated the lockup) and today in it's place was 'I'm not a robot' box to click. So clearly something different.

Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2022 3:04 pm

hogwild113 wrote:

Today I went to Google and put in Gearing Commander. Out of the responses, I got one for a YouTube demo for it. I watched it and realized I probably used a hacked version last night. Last night, I couldn't use the drop down menu and select a bike already in the database.

I went back and started Gearing Commander from www.gearingcommander.com and could access the bikes in the database. I went to Add A Bike and at that screen I did notice a difference. On the page last night it had a 'Continue' button to click at the bottom(that initiated the lockup) and today in it's place was 'I'm not a robot' box to click. So clearly something different.

Sounds like a cloned page got you.
Next thing is a security check of your computer, for malware.
I use the free version of Malwarebytes for that. Best way to find it is a google search. There is Malwarebytes Premium and there's the free version.
Make sure you've found the genuine Malwarebytes site, download the free version, tell it to run a full scan.
You'll get adverts for the full paid version, I ignore them, what you do is up to you. You could install the Premium if you like.
The scan will probably find you have one or two 'suspect' programs installed. Investigate them, then decide what to do about them.
I've got Auslogics Duplicate file finder installed. Malwarebytes doesn't like it, but I've told it to ignore that program.
If the scan comes up with programs you don't recognize, search with google again, find out what it is exactly and then tell Malwarebytes what to do about it.
Ignore, quarantine or delete.

You might not find anything amiss, in which case the security you have in place worked well.
But you clicked on a button, which might allow something past your security. Better to find out sooner rather than later.