I am not a computer whiz and am in need of some help here. I don't know where it came from (possibly skype or image off the net) but I had a trojan gen 2 virus attack my Dell inspiron windows 7 last night. All I could see was a black screen filled with dozens of error messages proclaiming I had a system failure (which I know I didn't) and a few icons on the start menu which I couldn't use. I could not gain access to anything on the system, including virus protection (showed the programs on the menu but empty folders) and the computer kept rebooting itself. I didn't know what else to do so started in safe mode and did a system restore for 3 days prior. The computer came back up and I was able to turn my virus software (endpoint protection) back on (the virus evidently turned it off), and run a full system scan. The trojan was trapped and I deleted it. The MAJOR issue I have is that all my documents and photos are not showing up anywhere. I could do a search and see the file but couldn't actually pull it up nor was it showing in my libraries (which are gone too). I thought if I could run a second restore going a bit farther back (5 days), I might be able to recover them (thinking the virus might have been present during the first restore time period). Upon completion of the 2nd restore, I opened up the windows live photo gallery and saw all my photo folders... then they disappeared right in front of me. Well.... now none of the documents or photos are even acknowledged in search, but when I ran a full system scan, all folders and document/photos the photo files were represented and scanned.
I realize if I had a backup disk that I could just pop the files back on and I'd be fine. Problem is, that I recently divorced and moved and can't find where I put my backup disks - if I even grabbed them. Most of the photos are of my children, treasured and I'm absolutely in tears. Is there anything I can do to recover them without paying a technician an arm and a leg? If I do a back up now, will the hidden files copy and recover, or are they too far down in my system to be acknowledged?
Any help would be appreciated. I won't do anything further until I am able to get some direction.
Thank you in advance.