Ok, so I downloaded a program, and it planted a virus on my computer. I know that it is somewhere in my appdata folder, but i don't know where. If I were to delete my appdata folder, would it recreate the default appdata folder, or would I mess everything up.

Note: My antivirus does not detect this virus.

What is your antivirus?
EDIT: And what is the program you downloaded?

First advice: Use Malwarebytes downloaded from any trusted site. In my experience it detects just most things.
If that fails, only then you should proceed doing stuff manually.

I am using the standard windows 10 Windows defender. I don't know which program it was that had the virus. I do know that it messed around with my start menu, as it was (probably) meant for windows 8. The microsoft edge and google chrome shortcuts were changed to a batch file labeled as internet explorer

Try doing the built-in offline scan. Go to settings>update and security>Windows Defender. Then scroll down to 'Scan Offline'. It's like the hard-core version of Windows Defender. Good luck!

As far as I know, there aren't any programs on this site that make you install anything on your computer to run them. Could you provide a list of all the programs you've downloaded? Do you remember if you had to run a .exe file or something like that?
am I misunderstanding your post?

Any sysadmin would tell you that the system is now unsafe for use, so you have to reinstall everything, the network will have to be scrubbed too, blah blah blah.

Anyway, if you want to follow that advice, sure, it'll probably save you if said virus is actually ransomware.

But, because you want to keep trying to remove the virus anyway, you need to explain in detail what the virus's purported behavior is, the name of the executable that you ran, and the name of the virus (or at least what you think it is).

Also, you need to be aware of what you're clicking and what your address bar says. Since around 2009, the address bars of Your Only Four Options (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera) put the domain of the website you are on in black, with everything else in gray. If you don't recognize that domain, or it doesn't seem to be what you expected, don't trust the site and leave. There are quite a number of malware attacks that are going around that use ad scripts or such to hijack click events to take you to a site that claims that "Firefox needs to be updated" or "You have viruses on your computer" and then asks you to download something. Do not trust those sites.

It took a while for Windows Defender to find it, but as it turns out it was an unlicensed version of Steins;Gate. It was labeled as a browser modifier that changed the respective browser's shortcuts into a .bat file. Luckily, because of how I start my browser (using windows key + r) I avoided running said .bat files, consequently not allowing the programs to actually attack my computer. The process that did this was called environment.exe, which out itself into the shell:startup folder, and caused User Account Control to ask for various other games to install with administrative privileges. I, knowing something was wrong, said no to every one of them, and refused to grant admin privileges until I had fixed the problem. If there is a way to access a full report of all actions Windows Defender took, I will be happy to post a text version of said actions.


Edit: I found the logs and here's what showed up


Code: