Originally Posted by
planensimple
You are assuming that its a malware, i went with what the OP wrote "virus" and i deal with them all the time so have a bit of an idea about them, As per Wikipedia "A number of recovery options exist after a computer has a virus. These actions depend on the virus. Some may be safely removed by functions available in most anti-virus software products. Others may require re-installation of damaged programs. It is necessary to know the characteristics of the virus involved to take the correct action, and anti-virus products will identify known viruses precisely before trying to "dis-infect" a computer; otherwise such action could itself cause a lot of damage. New viruses that anti-virus researchers have not yet studied therefore present an ongoing problem, which requires anti-virus packages to be updated frequently."
So untill or unless you can determine it in a sure shot way with the help of an expert it would be best to reinstall the OS rather than having your data being stolen and uploaded to remote servers.
But the first step is not to format the drive and reinstall everything. Thats kind of like nuking a city because one person has strep throat. If you are worried about data being stolen, disconnect the internet connection. You can install anti-malware/virus software from a USB stick downloaded on another computer.
I believe there are also viruses that can survive an OS reinstallation and even drive format. I do then agree that it is good to let an expert figure it out - which is what the folks at AVG, Avast, Norton, Symantec, etc. have done by writing the software to diagnose and clean them.
Of the last 25 systems I have cleaned, only one required an OS reinstall. I saved all the data, but the OS had been damaged - plus an upgrade to Win7 made sense. The others were all fixed with a few hours of scans by Malwarebytes and AVG.