I am behind paid versions of Sandboxie, Malwarebytes and Norton Security 2015. I also tend to notice WOT's symbols if I've searched for information about something. Having said that, I'm not so foolish to think that I (nor my wife) could not contract some lethal malware. Daily, Macrium Reflect runs two scheduled backups to two separate drives. I then make a snapshot with AX64. Now if I were to contract say a ransomware, how should/would I proceed? e.g. would I attempt to completely wipe my C drive then reinstall Windows, then use my recovery options or just recover like a normal recovery operation. Depending upon what the infection is, would you be able to access your backup programs and/or security programs? I know Malwarebyte's Chameleon claims it can. If someone were to describe some scenarios of both malware and recovery methods, either here or on the "Anti-Malware" page I suspect posters would appreciate it! Thank you!
Assuming all you data is on your c: drive restoring any image prior to infection and you should be good to go. Problem is if you another drive attached with data files. You have to have them backed up also or they would be encrypted. Any time you restore an image you are essentially wiping the drive. But no you don't need to reinstall anything. Recently I had to test to see if a program bypass had been fixed re ransomware. My machine has 3 internal drives, so I shadowed all 3 with Shadow Defender, and to get a baseline I let the malware run uninpeded. It had a field day on all 3 drives. THen I just exited Shadow Defender and bingo, data on all 3 drives were fine.
also recommend running online backups as things other than malware can cause havoc too (fires, burglary etc), also protects data against ransomware
