Hi All,
First of all thank you all for reading my thread and also let me apologize in advance for my use of terms which may or may not be wrong at times. I am a SUPER layman at using computers, I have absolutely no technical knowledge or terminology for computer stuffs.
I really need some help on the following issues, hopefully someone experienced can give me some lifesaving advises and solutions.
Earlier today, my PC got infected with multiple adware/trojan/virus (not sure which category they fall into) through downloading and attempting to install some shared programs online. It kept bringing me to a particular search website and I had no way to change to homepage of my browser. Later while I was trying to install some anti-virus programs, another file called "7.zip" popped up right after I download the anti-virus and I mistakenly accepted to install it into my PC. Several shortcuts for programs such as "speedy" and "adult dating" are installed onto my desktop without my consent and this was when I realized things were getting out of hand.
I have installed and ran the following anti-virus programs:
1. Zemana
2. Malewarebytes
3. RogueKiller
The malware redirection seems to be solved, though I had to reinstall my browser as I was not even able to locate it anywhere on my computer. Then now comes a few more concerning aftermath problems:
1. Several icons on my computers have disappeared. For instance, when I open a folder, pdf files which use to have the adobe icon, and excel files which had the excel icons are now a blank boxes.
2. Every now and then, at no specific time, I see a micro-second of a window (something that looks like a dos command) popping out and disappearing. It happens in a very split of a micro second that I cannot even see what is the content of the window. This lead me to suspect maybe my computer is still infected.
3. My file explorer is messed up. When I open my file explorer, the quick access bar keeps loading indefinitely, the only way I can see my files is to open a new tab on the file explorer and the first one continues to load forever...
Any assistance is greatly appreciated.