I concur with Darksheare.
I’ve done quite a lot of malware and virus repair, and sometimes that is the ONLY way to clean a drive short of re-formatting it and starting over.
It’s FUN!
*dies from attempt to sound like it was*
Now that I’m learning something from this thread, I too concur with Darksheare.
Darksheare, my strange brother, thank you.
I have gotten into the habit of making sure my files, software keys, etc are stored and backed up on portable drives. (Of course I scan them as well) On drive for backup, One drive for archives, One drive for music & video, one drive for pictures and another drive for my “stuff.”
I try to keep the laptop as uncluttered as possible so when something happens I do not have to worry about what I might lose. Then I do a clean install. A new broom sweeps cleaner and a reformatted drive runs faster.
I'm of the opinion that that is the only course of action once you've confirmed your system has been compromised. Once you confirm that you have malware working on your system, you can never truly be sure of what its done. Sure you might have cleaned the noisy virus or trojan that got your attention, but you can never really know what else it brought in and installed before you neutralized it. Root kits can be hell to detect once installed. Heck, you can't even be sure you got the virus you found since the determination of whether its on your system is limited to what the scanner or cleaners coders know the virus looks like on the day they wrote the definition. Some malware even goes after your Windows restore point.
No, format and reinstall is the only way to go once an infestation is confirmed. No doubt its a hassle, but its easier than having an undetected root kit.