Windows 7: post-trojan cleaning, Hidden/System folders no longer hidden/system

Greetings.



Windows 7-64, Home Premium, SP1.

I had a trojan infection last night, and successfully cleaned it using Combofix and MBAM, however, this morning I opened Windows Explorer, and noticed that hidden & system folders no longer have their hidden/system attributes, and they are all showing in Explorer, (folder options are set to hide these). This is true across all 3 of my hard drives.

Photo Album - Imgur

Is there an 'easy' fix to this, or should I start a repair install? I can't help but think that this is not a good thing at all. Can I just reset the hidden & system attributes for those folders, or am I in for a long day of reinstalling stuff?

many thanks in advance for any help!

I don't find anything via a Google search. Looks like a Repair Install is your best bet.

Lots of stuff on resetting file/folder permission but zip for attributes.

Before a Repair Install, try Reenable II to restore any damage done by the malware.

Since you have 64bit Windows, you have to download the lite Edition. Downloads

Re-Enable II

Help: here
By now most of you will already know that viruses that disable such critical Windows features
are very common. Once the virus disables any of the feature, common users have no choice
but to reinstall the Windows or perform complicated registry changes.
Re-Enable plans to change all this with a dead-simple tool

A few more options found here:

Reset System and Hidden Attributes for Files or Folders Caused by Virus

Windows Repair (All In One)

An issue of concern is that ComboFix itself was reported to have malware (Sality) in an executable file.
The problem was not resolved until this afternoon, and you mentioned that you ran CF last night.

In your shoes, would be heading for the System Security forum, and posting your concerns there:
System Security - Windows 7 Forums

Please read this.
Combofix infected

Thanks to all for the replies. I knew that even after a repair, I wouldn't feel confident about the security of the system, even post-cleaning, so I went ahead and just wiped the entire partition and reinstalled Windows. I took the opportunity to go ahead and restructure my partitions, which I'd been wanting to do anyway.

Again, many thanks to all who replied! I bookmarked this thread for future reference.

That is of course a good thing you have done.

Atleast now, you should start thinking of backing up your system regularly.

There are many free backup software and the one most recommended here is Macrium Reflect free.

You can also make a recovery CD so that you can restore the system even when it becomes non-bootable.

Once you master the art of backing up and restoring, you need not go through the pain of reinstalling from scratch.

Funny you mention Macrium. Part of the reason I restructured my partitions was to reduce the size of C:, to make it easier to image the partition. After installing windows, drivers, and favorite apps, I used Macrium to create a 'fresh' install image, and a rescue CD, and I'll leave those alone.

I'm pretty religious about backing up most things. I've been using Syncback to backup folders such as My Docs, Music, Pics, etc. But this time I captured the whole C: partition. I feel better now