Talk-Polywell.org

I was stupid. I was working in and another forum and got hit with a dialog box that I couldn't close asking for permission to change the hard drive. I thought it was the typical adware. It was worse, much worse. It was ransomware.

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com ... kidnapped/

Sorry to hear that, there is very little that can be done to help you.
the only thing I can offer is that you need to learn to set up a virtual machine and have some form of disconcerted backup.
The virus are usually armored and the encryption is very good.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/securit ... mware.aspx
There are some links and some possible remediation in the previous links but the outlook is not optimistic
sadly even the FBI recommends paying for the data if critical to operation. But forking over funds to pay the ransom doesn’t guarantee attackers will be true to their word and victims will be able to access their data again. In many cases, this doesn’t occur.
some more info
https://www.wired.com/2015/09/hacker-le ... hats-rise/

we had one computer hit at work and it took three days and a lot of luck to get that computer data. As it was we lost a lot and did not recover everything. Mainly due to the fact the virus was poorly written it just did not find all the files.
Sorry again.

Were you running internet exploiter?

Thanks for reminding me to plug in the 5 TB USB drive and run a backup.

And then unplug it, because an air gap is the only way to keep the bastards out for sure.