So I was stupid and ended up thinking a fake pop up for a malware trojan was from my AVG antivirus, I should have known better. It restarted my computer and now it's pretty crazy.
My programs show up, as well as my documents, but it's like nothing is actually installed. Everytime I attempt to open something, I get a pop up telling me, in one way or another, that the program is either not recognized or not valid on my computer. The only program that works is internet explorer, and even that gives me a pop up asking me what program I want it to run on. I've learned that it doesn't need that question answered to run, though.
It turned Windows Defender off, which I somehow managed to turn back on and run a scan with, only to have it run into an error and shut down about halfway through. AVG isn't recognized at all, and while I can search for it in my programs, it says it doesn't exist. I tried downloading two separate things from microsoft (a free full scan and malware I think) only to have them not be able to run.
Finally, I tried to get Norton Anti-Virus on my computer, after having to save the installer to run the program, because it gives me that option everytime I try to do something with a document, and it made it as far as installation before it shut down.
I went into safe mode but it didn't allow me to access the Vista System Restore. Not sure what to do, as these problems occur even in safe mode. I can't even turn it off regularly, as the exclamation point is on the power icon, meaning that it has something it wants to "update" my computer with. I have a feeling that's just going to spread it.
I honestly have no idea about computers so anything is helpful. I'm on a different computer at the moment, turned my laptop off. Afraid to turn it on again until something can actually be done about it.
