Addendum:

    Power + Zero didn't work. I plugged in my rescue disk. Laptop will not boot into it. Did once before without any problem. Its working not that it isn't its just doing the reformat is proving to be a pain.

Bucket of water....

Step 1.  Boot laptop.

Step 2.  Place gently into bucket.

Step 3.  Buy new laptop.

Step 4.  Undertake NEVER to use/install ANY form of toolbar...downloader...or Bryce.

Step 5.  Expect to be resoundly humiliated by yrag if/when he sees this....

How on earth does a person get malware or anything else on their system like that? 

In a word?

Toolbars and downloaders.

OK.... 3 words then ....

i cant believe you had so much malware.. im not even going to ASK what places you visit to pick up that shit..

you should be doing malware and advanced system care daily, not just when your pc feels slugish...

15 months is young for a pc, just over a year old.. should still be in beautiful condition....

im guessing you use antivirus.... or hope you do.

im sorry uvah but you need to get more smart when it comes to your pc and the internet.

Try to treat your pc like its the only one you will ever own. and it will thankyou in return by serving you

loyaly.

If this one truly is broken.. you still have the one me and andy gave you, right?

my advice would be (if you have an original copy of windows) f2 or f3 or whatever to get into boot registry and change it to boot

from disk, then put the disk in and restart and hope it works.

My laptop is fine and so is the Acer. Whar I want to know os two things. One...when Malware bytes isolated the bugs it listed where they came from. How did they get into Photoshop. The downloader I can understand but not Adobe. I've used PS for years and never had this problem before and no...I don't have any toolbars installed. I learned that lesson a long time ago. Two: Why didn't my antivirus nail them before they got on my machine? I have ASC Pro and that should have stopped them dead, Threatfire too. And Kitty...you're right about running scans daily. I usually do it every other or third day. At any rate the non crisis is past. One thing I will do though is keep PS off the net. The first time I encountered that problem with the popup was with PS 7 only it didn't freeze up. The next time it happened was with CS 6 trial version beta. That I reported to Adobe. It happened again with the release of  CS 6 after the beta was finished. It froze that time too but never gave me problem afterwards. I think that somehow, and this is what leads me to believe this is that two of the bugs were called back doors and another two misleading, something got into Adobe's download manager which I got rid of. The youget downloader I tried after having problems with youtube which I no longer use for dl'ing. I use that to convert video's from one format to another. That works as advertised. One more thing. I've since installed the htpp to https app on my machine, before all this took place. Could that have anything to do with it?

you should also have a look at your version of Photoshop.

in that "CS2" thread you said you would be running the (ancient) version 7. i am not even sure this old version would work under Windows 7, and the icon in your taskbar says Photoshop CS6. hope you got whatever version you are running from a legitimate source.

 edit: just saw you got the trial version as well. ok, that's not the reason then.

if you are talking about HTTPS Everywhere, and you got it from the EFF website: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere then no.

if it is "some app", that you got from a download portal, then yes.

always get your software from the original website. as soon as you use some third party sites, there is a good chance for goodies to be wrapped in the installer.

You referred to 'Oldbar'.

Windows doesn't actually NEED an 'Advanced System Care' or any other panic-ware.  It runs just fine on its own.

If you need to run a scan with your AV it is God's way of telling you you are too late.

You need something a little more pre-emptive....something that separates the 'idiot' from the 'user'...so you don't always have an Eye Dee Ten Tee crisis.

Anything....that's ANYTHING [for the deaf] that calls itself a 'downloader' is bad....except at least it is honest.  While you download your porn you also get a quaint backdoor inserted where the sun doesn't shine.

Of course, the ONLY reason I say keep away from Bryce is the reality that about one or three people  ONTHEPLANET actually know how to use it.

Properly.

Can I make a suggestion for web browsing Ross?  First, use Firefox, and second you should install an addon called Web of Trust. From then on if you access a site and get a warning from Web of Trust, leave immediately! These would be sites marked by other users as not trustable for one reason or another.  Although there had been mistakes made, (users submitting false reports), those seem to have been cleared up now and the addon works very well.

As far as malware and stuff, I never use any of those malware programs. All I use is Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) and an older program called HiJackThis, which tells you what is running on your PC in the background and allows you to control (mark as OK or remove it). I also have a secure hardware, and run the standard Windows firewall also. I clean my registry daily, check my background programs daily, and make sure MSE is updated at least daily. I always keep current on Windows and all other product updates also.

Of course, this all depends on what type of software you install (source of) and what web sites you visit too. You have to be extremely careful in that regard.

Uvah did you run the scan in safe mode as Admin ?
Download Malwarebytes then update it- disconnect your laptop from the net and restart the system, boot into safemode.
I had an equal problem with a friends PC he had the modified ( updated ) GEMA trojan on his PC and 2 other infections.
We ended up cleaning the problem but it only worked in safemode with Malwarebytes.
So here is what i did..
(What you could try is disabling all emulation software that emulates CD-DVD roms if you have any) since these are highly likely to expand the time of the scan for rootkits and others. there was a small tool that did exactly that dont rememeber the name atm.
After that the full MB scan as Admin.


Another thing many dont know 
If you try and make a backup of your disk that is infected... never NEVER! go and copy things that have .exe .msi .pif .bat .com these can be directly executed by the system.

AND then there is the indirect executeables most will just copy over like .html .htm
 .js .msc .doc* .doc .ins too many to name but you get the idea you can google for a list of indirect executables.
AND NO do not just save possibly infected shit.. you will have to scan each and every .doc or file that is an indirect exe first and not only via Antivirus/malware scanner from a clean rig it is recommended to make a online scan like virustotal and check each file for its own.
Sounds like a lot of work and it IS but better be safe than sorry...

All good but i dont trust MSE... since we tested it. Updated i could extract and launch an infected file that was clearly a Virus without any warning what so ever it just didnt wanted to report it, on the other PC it did strangely( equal PC hardware same OS same drivers same everything ) since that day i can only laugh about it.
But anyway... You run what you like right
Hijack this is pretty old and was replaces by OTL - OTLlogfile by Oldtimer it does the same but has more options.
I like the rest with the trust thingy you mentioned i have that included in my AV and i run chrome.


 

Okay.......I played with it little bit but haven't in quite some time so it went.

I have from day one. I had Chrome and Lunascape and had used both during that time. They're gone too. FF version is 18.02

again...from day one.

Yup

And I know which sites to stay away from. I once used Bing to search for Photoshop tuts. ASC puts a blue checkmark next to safe sites and no checkmark next to others that are questionable. I hovered over one without the checkmark and ASC said don't go there, it can put malware on your system. I didn't go there. I'm usually very careful about where I go which is why I installed HTPPS everywhere. But its clean now and running nicely.

Oh and one more thing. On any of my machines you will never see porn in any way shape or form! Just for the record.

Overkill. Once a month will suffice.

I heard tell there was actually someone who claimed that.....

You just watch it on the net, not ON your PC...lol...just kidding Uvah.  

Bing finds malware sites when you are looking for Photoshop tutorials? wow, hard to believe Bing is that bad. use Google then.

Just FYI, I never run a scan unless my machine "tells" me it needs one by acting wonky.

I use IE9, ZERO addons. ZERO Toolbars.

I have an A/V installed, it does it's job pretty well.

My personal opinion is that your downloading and installing habits is what needs to be watched.

I don't want any third party software "restricting" where I go and what I do. I rely on my own experience to govern that. Serves me pretty well.

I don't want any "blockers" blocking me from doing what I want to do. Some apps block things that are ok. I hate those. I trust me.

Just my 2 cents.

Whatever. Scanning everyday is overkill. Seriously. I only scan once a month with Malwarebytes and I come up clean. Why would I need to do it everyday? Waste of time and resources. I watch were I go on the net and what I download. So I don't really worry about malware.