Agreed. Another somewhat disappointing response was given to a genuine inquiry.
Simple. Following malware infection, particularly following bad malware infection such as Cryptolocker, I fail to see how anyone can consider their computer trustworthy anymore and so there is no answer other than a format and re-install. Unless its particularly docile low-risk malware, there's no way you'd find me wasting hours of my time trying to clear up a malware infection
AND then be happy to to my online banking on the same computer !
Cryptolocker means I've got to physically connect my backup drive, every day, only when doing a backup and after verifying I don't have this thing!
I've gone on about backup routines here time after time.
Only one backup drive and you're not doing backups.
For any files of vague importance you should have a minimum three backup drives, one of which should always be maintained offline when not in use (and ideally offsite) if not actually being an offline medium itself (e.g. CD/DVD/Bluray/Tape).
Given how cheap hard drives are these days, its not difficult to maintain multiple drives (you don't need high spec SSD drives, cheap slow 5400rpm/5900rpm/7200rpm ones will do as long as they are new, not secondhand from ebay and from a reputable manufacturer and preferably from their enterprise grade range as they will have more robust hardware and firmware .... something like the WD Se, Seagate Terascale, Seagate NAS HDD or such like ... if you want to be extra-safe, mix and match manufacturers rather than sourcing all drives from one).
If you
really want to do things properly, look into the concept of a backup rotation scheme such as GFS, Tower of Hanoi or the like. That gives you some degree of protection against sudden virus infections as you can safely go back in time (unlike Windows Restore which cannot be trusted following malware infection). You can adapt the rotation pattern to suit how far you want to go back and how many drives you have at your disposal.
Maybe use some reliable cloud storage provider (or two) to implement part of your backup rotation scheme if you want to avoid buying a large number of drives.... take a look at Amazon Glacier for example, for archival storage, or Amazon S3 for general rotation. You can easily encrypt your files before you upload them if you are concerned about privacy and security. There are various bits of software you can get to ease and automate your interaction with the cloud services.
But in the end, in terms of malware the easiest thing to do is what I said up front..... prevention is the best cure for malware ... avoid that temptation of clicking on unexpected attachments (even unexpected files sent by people you know.... they might have been sent by viruses), and don't use your computer as a user with administrator rights.
Malware infections don't suddenly happen, they are always a result of user actions ! Sure once they're on your network they might hunt around for targets.... but it still takes someone to get them on your network in the first place.