Doing Virus Remediation - On Myself

We all eventually get them.   Computer viruses.   They're vile and pointless and will waste a lot more time than you would expect.

How I got this one, I don't know.  Surf a Russian Website?  Clicked on the wrong link?  Reading the wrong Subreddit?  Just don't know.

We found something wrong with the network here and checked Comcast.  They had problems in the neighborhood.  So resetting the cable modem, and powering off all of the computers and phones that have Wifi on them was in store.

When the computers came back, all was well.  That is until I started to surf on the main daily driver that I have.  Pages didn't load, or loaded in minutes to hours to never.  Finding a problem after a computer restart is the way many people will encounter a virus or trojan.  Programs get "updated" but don't take effect until you restart them.

It's been a lot of downloading antivirus programs on other computers, and finding out which one is going around the laptop causing problems.  Microsoft's antivirus and virus remediation programs did not find a problem.  Kaspersky's virus removal tool ran and didn't find anything either.

When I powered off the laptop it put me into the "System Recovery" routine on Windows 7.  That is never a good sign.  Blue screen on Windows 7?  Yes, it still happens.  

I'm limping along.  There's an old backup on a hard drive I may have to restore from.  Luckily, I have another hard drive I can swap in to do the restore on before I trash what I have on this one.  Confused?  Sure, but join the crowd.

If you're still reading here's what I did wrong:

Backups are old and infrequent.
I open more than 400 web pages a day for professional purposes.
I may open close to that 400 web pages a day for entertainment.  I'm a heavy reader.


Here's what I did right:
Virus scanner is updated daily.
Virus checks are done weekly.
The entire computer is scanned when I do it manually after a manual virus update.

I guess I didn't listen to what I tell others.  The cobbler's children often have the worst shoes.