Adware

[Simon]

And take a moment to be glad it's not ransomware. A neighbor called me last week to come help him as his computer had downloaded something that wouldn't let him do anything aside from go to their website and pay for the program they sell. It wouldn't let him use the Control Panel or boot into Safe Mode on restart via any of the usual methods so he was about to toss it in the canal.

(For those who may need it, we got to Safe Mode by restarting and then pulling the plug on power just after it began the startup sequence. This made his PC open the Startup Settings screen so we were able to restore a previous good save point.)

The reason I bring this up is to ask if you've tried using System Restore to just move back to an earlier save point before the adware infected your computer?