There are lots of posts here with people who had the same symptoms I had:
1. First I noticed that I heard the Windows alarm noise every so often. I didn't pay attention to this.
2. Then I had the fake XP Antivirus software
3. Malwarebytes removed that, but then I had that Google redirect, and Google Chrome would no longer work, just like everyone else has complained about.
Luckily this was on my laptop computer, and there wasn't much on there. Sony was kind enough to leave a second partition on my hard drive, and software built into the BIOS that reinstalls your system based on that partition. (The rootkit--or whatever it was--couldn't have infected that, could it?)
I installed Avast! anti-virus on my computers (but people say they got infected with this stuff despite having anti-virus software running), and now I'm only surfing the web with Google Chrome with Plug-ins turns off. When I need to use a site requiring a plug-in, like YoutTube or NetFlix, I use Windows Explorer. (Unfortunately, I can't turn off JavaScript because most websites just don't work without Javascript.)
Am I safe now?