Windows Refresh not possible after malware incident..

[Nickkk101]

Hey Guys,
Im experiencing a bit of instability of my laptop before and after windows defender has indicated (and removed to my knowledge) two Trojans. This is the first malware incident I've had in years. The win defender is the only antivirus on the PC after blowing away the OS when I clean installed 8.1 when it was released. The desktop was crashing during browsing (chrome) with a full stop coming shortly after. A restart has so far, been able to recover. I've only had this happen twice but im nervy.. the last Trojan was indicated as Removed according to win defender. My question is regarding, Windows Refresh- I wanted to do this after the first crash but was not able to as I was told "there are some files missing, your install disc etc will have these.." I don't have an install disc of course. So I can't refresh. What options to I have? Can I still create a recovery USB with this message..? Or should I not worry.. Any thoughts appreciated!

 

[Harrie-S]

I would first recommend to use malware bytes to scan your pc.
https://www.malwarebytes.org/
You can use the free version. This will scan but you will not have an realtime monitoring , which is not important in your case.
I even think this can repair missing "files".

 

[hotphil]

Get yourself a boot CD/USB from Kaspersky, BitDefender, Sophos or your vendor of choice. Use one or more of them to run a proper scan of the whole disk.

Some options here: 15 Free Bootable Antivirus Tools (Updated February 2015)

​From an administrator command prompt, type "sfc /scannow" without quotes and then Enter. It'll have a stab at replacing any missing files. Which may allow you to then do a refresh.