My friend received a call from a person claiming to be a Microsoft tech support representative. This person claimed her laptop was infected with malware and compromised by hackers. He proceeded to manipulate her with technical jargon and persuaded her to install ShowMyPC software on her laptop, at which point he gained remote access onto the laptop. At this point, the man opens notepad and types out protection plans offered by his company called Iyogi. He says that her computer will not be safe unless she pays subscribes to their protection plans. At this point she refuses to pay and he locks her computer from startup. i.e. when you boot the computer you get a prompt for a start-up password before you can get to the Windows 8 user login screen.
I was able to bypass the start-up password using System Restore which restored it to a state before any of this happened. To be safe, I also used Windows 8 Reset feature to format the hard drive and perform a fresh install of Windows from the recovery partition (this is an Asus Windows 8 laptop with a BIOS-embedded product key).
My questions are:
1) Is the computer safe to use now? (Access the internet, log into e-mail, banking etc. Note all passwords were changed for her accounts from a separate computer and a suspicious activity watch was placed on her bank/credit card)
2) Do we need to use anti-virus/malware/rootkit cleaning software? If so, what tools should I use? And can I run it from this computer? or do I need to use separate media?
I am not sure what steps to take next. Any help is appreciated. Thank you.