I echo Bullseye's advice for the Malware bytes. We use that at work for virus removal and it's probably some of the best software out there honestly. Running a full scan in safe mode will help you. However, Avast is a free program, now they are charging for full protection. So if you get the free one it is not active protection, it's just a scanner, nothing more.
There's a few things you can do first before attempting a format of the hard drive.
Run disk clean up. This will help remove some of the garbage files that Windows accumulates.
Run disk defragmenter. I recommend downloading Auslogics free one. It is much quicker than windows and I see noticeable improvements in performance after using it.
If you do want to go ahead and get it back to factory setting, then yes you will have to reformat the partition. By doing this, you will lose your programs, data and settings. So be sure before you do anything, make sure your data is backed up to some sort of external media. System restore points are a possibility, but you will see the problem creep back after a while. They are not a guaranteed fix.
Once your data is backed up, I can't stress that enough you will need :
- The recovery disks that came with your system, or ones you've made yourself. If you do not have recovery disks, do not panic. Your system might have it built into a portion of the hard drive. You will be able to tell if you have an F11 recovery option when you first boot into the black screen past the BIOS. Usually where the manufacturers name appears e.g Dell, HP etc.
-Make sure you have all the programs disks nearby as you will need to reinstall whatever was lost. If you have recovery disks you made yourself, then your programs will be imaged onto the disks and you won't need this step.
-Any additional driver disks for printers, wireless cards or anything else that you installed post purchasing the PC. These will all need to be reinstalled.
This will also depend on what operating system you have also, but when performing the recovery, in XP you will actually format that active partition. In Vista, this is in the advanced options and is called 'destructive recovery'. Once you initiate this process, you cannot go back, your hard disk is going to be wiped completely and put back to factory settings.
Then it's a matter of following on screen instructions and reinstalling your stuff/ moving your files back over.
Hope that helps, if you need more help PM me. I do this every day for work, so I'm happy to give out free tech work.
