mountain51

About a year ago I bought a new laptop. Several months ago it started acting strange. After talking with a friend who had been hacked in the past, I ran some cleaning software that he recommended which found some Rootkit files and others which were removed. I've run two antivirus programs along with CCleaner, and Malwarebits. My compute got better but not to my satisfaction. When the latest Microsoft update was automatically installed the overall operation of Windows improved but I am still nervous. I want to wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything for a clean system. Windows 10 offers 'Fresh Start'. Is this the same as doing a clean install?
I know just enough about computer to really get myself in trouble.
Any and all feedback would be appreciated.
Thanks

catalint Loc: oslo

Not sure what the best advice it would be, but if you wanna start fresh, I would suggest formatting the harddrive first.
If you have not heard the latest news , CCleaner had a major infection, and the advice to get clean is actually formatting the drive.

To be sure: format.

WayneT Loc: Paris, TN

With what you have on board now it sounds like you should be OK. The CC Cleaner had a malware attached but only to specific builds of the product and you can check that build number on their website. If you really feel like you need to do it again than I go along with "catalint" and say definitely make sure you have a back up of all your data and do a full disk format and reload a clean copy of Window's 10. Once you have done that, down load all the updates to your copy of Window's before loading any other program or trying to get on line to any other site other than the Microsoft update site.