first and foremost, a sincere and big thank you to all of you who are helping the infected and helpless masses - many many thanks! also, i originally posted this in the ".aaa" variant thread, so that's the one im infected with...
ok, so i must have gotten infected sometime late last night, right before putting the pc (xp sp3 home with only 19gigs of total hd space - 16gigs of it used) on standby and going to bed. note: i do NOT open any emails on that pc, ever, i had to have gotten bit from an infected page (i was visting politically themed blogs, one of them must have got me). anyway, i turned on the pc today and noticed some weird files (with .aaa extension) and new icons on desktop, but no official ransom page yet. i immediately disconnected ethernet cable and the 2 external hd's (ive managed to check one of them and thank goodness it doesnt appear to have been compromised, the other one im afraid to check so im putting it off for later). went to startup via ccleaner and confirmed that two (maybe three) new items were added, disabled them.
i was afraid to stay on the infected pc, so im speaking from memory, which is a bit hazy about exact details, though logs were made - plz forgive me for the vagueness of the next few details but... using something to halt processes, i halted processes, then used JRT, which did something (wish i could remember what). then scanned using AdwCleaner, and it found several files which i let it "clean". when done it asked to reboot, i said yes. once fully restarted i then got the official ransom page. went to my music folder, double clicked a song, and it played. i then shut the pc down again, and restarted it using bitdefender rescue disk on cd, and did a scan. it found "1 threat in 2 items still present" on the pc, the one listed as "gen:trojan.heur.autoIT.1", and thats where im at currently - afraid or unsure of what to do or not to do. having read about teslacrypt and its variants for the past few hours, i dont want to risk losing anything which might help decrypt whatever files have been encrypted. so here are my questions:
should i let bitdefender clean the trojan? if yes, should i delete or disinfect it? what should i do after that? will either grinler's or dolly's tool work with the .aaa file extension? if not or if it fails because the key is gone, whats my next step?
is there an automated program that can gather the pieces i need to save and put away for possible future release/leak of a key?
what do i need to do to return to "normal" computing/surfing? is there an automated program that will remove the requisite entries/files/executables for the ransomware? or is that what the scanners have already removed? note: as a final step i will run eset's free scanner...
probably a dumb question, but should i run malwarebytes' anti-rootkit? should i run combofix?
again thanks for any help, and plz forgive my noobishness, im dumbfounded and lost as to what exactly to do next. i did read the two faqs for crypto/tesla/alpha, but still am not quite sure of what specific action(s) to take next. any help or guidance anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated!
*remember im paused at the end of a bitdefender scan with two items awaiting action. please advise me on the best next immediate action to take - thank you!