Your decision as to what action to take should be made by reading and asking yourself the questions presented in these articles:
In some instances an infection may have caused so much damage to your system that it cannot be completely cleaned, repaired or trusted especially if you are dealing with rootkit components that can hook into the Windows 32-bit kernel, and patch several APIs to hide new registry keys and files they install. The malware may leave so many remnants behind that security tools cannot find them and a
Repair Install will NOT help!. Reinstalling Windows without first wiping the entire hard drive with a repartition/reformat
will not remove the infection. The reinstall will only overwrite the Windows files. Any malware on the system will still be there afterwards. Starting over by wiping your drive,
reformatting, and performing a clean install of the OS or doing a factory restore with a vendor-specific
Recovery Disk or Recovery Partition removes everything and is the
safest action but
I cannot make that decision for you.
Should you decide to reformat, we can provice instructions. Should you decide not to reformat, we will do our best to help clean the computer of any infections but
we cannot guarantee it to be trustworthy or that the removal will be successful. If you wish to proceed,
disinfection will probably require the use of more powerful tools than we recommend in this forum. Before that can be done you will need you to create and post a DDS/HijackThis log. Let me know how you wish to proceed.
Please read the pinned topic titled "
Preparation Guide For Use Before Posting A Hijackthis Log".
If you cannot complete a step, then skip it and continue with the next. In
Step 6 there are instructions for downloading and running
DDS which will create a
Pseudo HJT Report as part of its log.
When you have done that,
post your log in the
HijackThis Logs and Malware Removal forum,
NOT here, for assistance by the HJT Team Experts. A member of the Team will walk you through, step by step, on how to clean your computer. If you post your log back in this thread, the response from the HJT Team will be delayed because your post will have to be moved. This means it will fall in line behind any others posted that same day.
Start a new topic, give it a relevant title and post your log along with a brief description of your problem, a summary of any anti-malware tools you have used and a summary of any steps that you have performed on your own. An expert will analyze your log and reply with instructions advising you what to fix. After doing this, we would appreciate if you post a link to your log back here so we know that your getting help from the HJT Team.
Please be patient. It may take a while to get a response because the HJT Team members are very busy working logs posted before yours. They are volunteers who will help you out as soon as possible. Once you have made your post and are waiting, please DO NOT "bump" your post or make another reply until it has been responded to by a member of the HJT Team. Generally the staff checks the forum for postings that have 0 replies as this makes it easier for them to identify those who have not been helped. If you post another response there will be 1 reply. A team member, looking for a new log to work may assume another HJT Team member is already assisting you and not open the thread to respond.