A technician is troubleshooting a Windows PC that is heavily infected with malware. Anti-malware scans in Safe Mode have failed to remove the infection, and the operating system is now unstable with frequent crashes and evidence of corrupted system files. Which of the following is the MOST definitive action to resolve these issues?
The correct answer is to reimage the hard drive. Reimaging is the process of removing the current operating system and replacing it with a clean, known-good image. This is the most effective solution for severe malware infections and widespread OS corruption when other repair methods, like anti-malware scans and system file checks, have failed. Running System File Checker again would likely be ineffective as previous repair attempts failed. Rolling back updates is irrelevant to a malware infection. Disabling System Restore is a step in malware removal to prevent reinfection from a restore point, but it does not fix the underlying corruption or remove the active malware.
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