Originally Posted by
heckfarr
If you get rid of the virus that's currently on the computer, it will not decrypt your files and they'll be gone forever.
It really depends on which ransomware the OP has. The nastiest is Cryptolocker, which really does use strong encryption to encrypt all files the user has write access to, including network files.
Others may just display a prompt saying that files are encrypted, but not actually encrypting them, or hiding them, or something else.