Suzanne - I can only imagine what a pain this must be. I was without the internet for a day last week and I nearly went loopy

I had to restore my computer back several weeks but I got rid of the virus with out recovering it.

Had the same problem few weeks ago. Seems a trojan (or bot, or something) had come in & taken over all my memory and was staying connected to the internet sending out spam, etc. Look in your task mananger & you'll see if your internet is running! You can close it & it'll open right back up! I finally had to have the computer connected to another computer (as a slave??) & then it was able to be cleaned up & the bad guy deleted. But it was so bad I couldn't open any programs or finally couldn't even get on the internet! BUT the man was able to save everything (programs, etc) on my computer!!

My poor Sister Friend. And poor Dave who has spent days and days trying to get it back up and running. Did your laptop do this in sympathy of my vertigo. Shame on both the virus and my vertigo.

What a HUGE aggravation! I'm sorry this happened to you. We aren't worried about the flowers, but miss seeing you.

I feel you pain...I hope you are back up and running soon...and that you did not lose any of your files...

I feel your pain also. It was just a year ago, I lost 5 sewing machines in a day and a week later the computer to a sleeper virus. I am so happy to be stitching right now!

So sorry for your problem...
My husband has installed a program called WOT it is a free program of mozilla firefox, sometimes it happens in some sites, even before you open the link, that wot open a message says it's better to leave the site or says to do not open anything that could be harmful. that's why i think it's safe!
I hope it will be useful to you all!
Hugs Sonia

when you backup make sure you have the format extension added in the set-up. i thought i was doing good with backups until my daughter checked it & found i was only backing up my word docs & things like that..no embroidery designs. she showed my how to add them so hopefully now my files are safe.

I so feel your pain...and hope you are back to "normal" soon...I try to be very careful when I visit sites...especially some of the ones that have been posted in the freebies section lately...I have had some major warnings within the past several weeks.

I am sorry you are having this struggle. There are only two ways of fixing a computer that is as damaged as your computer operating system seems to be -- take it to a professional that can scan it without running the operating system or reload as you plan to do.
I do recommend that you purchase a very strong anti-virus program because of all the downloads you do. Only Eset, Kaspersky, and Bitdefender are good enough to protect with all the many places you go online. Even those can use the help of a manually run program like Malwarebytes.
Just for new users information -- two automatic antivirus programs are not better than one great one. They will fight over control of your computer like teenagers over who gets to drive...often slowing down your computer and letting nasty viruses in.
I hope it all works out for you.

Oh, Suzanne, I am so sorry that someone so devious got into your computer......I also feel they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and definitely should be a felony!! Good luck to you in your recovery!

I've been going through alot with my computer as well, but learning it is not just virus' that are my problem...and I do mean problem. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what was going on...I thought it was a virus...turns out malware...been running scans all weekend...must have been on my external hard drives and dumb me even though I had scanned them some time ago didn't think to re-scan them. I'd be embarrassed to say just how many 'risk traces' have been found and disinfected on just one of the external hard drives and my computer...have 2 more to go. That's what I get not thinking and trying to recover all the designs from my first hard drive...evidently new definitions for the anti-virus software have come out and is catching all that wasn't found before. Still scanning but my computer isn't acting up as it did before. It wasn't until the new update on my anti virus was any of this found. I have Viper and it is a very good anti virus. Malwarebytes didn't even find the infection. Wishing you a happy ending in your dilemma.

Feels good, after all the work...I'm down to '1' tracking cookie on my computer. I hope you are doing as well or better. I trusted programs that all should have worked. I only have one anti virus on my computer so there was no competition with the programs...I use to run all the necessary programs on a DAILY basis when I collected what was on my first external hard drives. The files for all practical purposes should have been clean...but found them to be loaded with malware. I don't understand 'malware' , just that it is something we all don't want. Now my computer isn't acting weird, as I transferred a few infected files, and it does what it is suppose to. All because of malware.

hope the problems will be over soon!

It is so sick that some so called people do this . I see you back up,that is good . Taking it back to factory settings will do the trick , BUT be careful the virus is not on anything you are going to put back on.I hope it goes well .
Hugs Pam.

My computer is ailing and back in August it would not start not even in safe mode. It gets too hot and crashes. Have a cooling fan underneath it and a smaller fan blowing air on the spot that get so hot. Found out they put cheap fans in the units these days. Took four tries to get it back on and was able to factory restore it. Then there were about 300 updates and configurations. A couple weeks before Christmas as I hit the empty recycle button I saw registry keys being deleted. That had to be my human error especially for not checking the recycle bin. It limped along for a couple weeks before I restored back to factory settings once again not being able to find a download that could replace them. All in all I didn't loose too much in August and nothing from the Christmas restore. It isn't as bad as I though it would be and the second time went smoothly because it was something I planned. In the mean time our daughter got a trojan/virus and after three hours was about to restore hers when I asked if I could help. Found a fix on my computer to tell her what to do and then a scan so within an hour hers was back to normal. She remembers installing software and during that process it left the trojan/virus that morphed rather fast. It is unconscionable to know someone has that much time to be malicious.

Sorry you are still having problems..sounds like your computer had what mine did last year where it shut everything down. I was lucky enough to be able to get into 'safe' mode though. I now am doing a start up disk and flash drive just in case they are needed.