
Quote: Originally Posted by
craig1985 Everything on my computer is backed up on a hard drive in the event that I have to start over.
IF by "everything" you mean a system image; and,
IF the system image was done before your machine got infected,
then restoring your machine to that system image would be your best option. But if there's any question as to
when the computer actually got infected, the system image could also be corrupt.
Of course, you'd have to update all programs on that system image and if you installed anything after the system image was made you'd have to reinstall those programs. But all things considered a very minor inconvenience compared to a complete format and reinstall of everything.
Another possibility is checking to see if your computer has a hidden recovery partition. If it does you could restore your machine to the same condition it was in when it left the factory. You might see something in your start menu > all programs called recovery manager or something similar. Or, I believe for an HP Pavillion, you could start your machine and immediately start clicking the F11 key and get access to the recovery partition that way.
As a general rule, no malware removal program is 100% effective 100% if the time. If there was such a thing we'd all be using it.