after further investigating the damage potentially caused to my computer I have noticed there were two 'infections' that seemed to have activated on my system. there are over 482 instances of two files. one is called 'decrypt_instruction.txt' and the other is called 'decrypt_instruction.html' and they are in many of the core folders of my harddrive. this means there are likely 241 unique folders that these are present in. there is also a third file called 'install_tor.html' in as expected 240 unique folders. these files have two different timestamps. the first 'infection' took place 10/28/2014 at 9:19pm and the second took place three hours later at 12:19am. while constantly rebooting and testing my machine to locate the cause (im not a computer expert) I also noticed that at one point it said 'powershell.exe' unable to load. this seems inline with many other users as they also have the same concurrent problems. that is to say:
powershell.exe issues, dllhost.exe replication, com surrogate issues, computer lag, unable to download from internet, backdoor and Trojan infection, fake update screens.
on a separate note: i found what looks like a good tutorial on fixing powershell.exe errors and i was wondering if i could follow those steps in order to fix or semifix my computer. i can post the link or pm it but i don't want to mislead people if it does not work.