Just an update, since it seems the other similar thread in search comes up in pink and can't open any of those.

Presently I'm trying to move any useful content from the infested laptop to other machines. It seems I'll have to use some kind of frisbee network (i.e. walk around with a thumb drive) because the bloody thing won't connect to anything.

1) It sees other W7 machines but not XP and not Linux. Sees a virtual machine running under Linux.

2) The other machines see it but nothing I try gives me a login into it.

3) Logging into the virtual W7 works but I can't create a file or folder there, so moving things in bulk is out of the question.

4) I tried to assign all privileges to Guest, but it choked on the number of files, couldn't recurse through all the folders and then I had to cancel. It severely warned me that this may leave the system of permissions in chaos as the propagation of permissions didn't run its course (as if that one was my fault). I don't see why it has to recurse in the first place, can't it just inherit this? IOW, read the permissions from the parent folder instead of having them repeated for each of thousands of files (most of which may be junk but I don't want to waste too much time on this, I want this automated as if on a computer).

5) tried to create a new user, no way. There are no users anymore, there are accounts. And for these accounts it doesn't allow any username, it has to be an email. A school email or company email or some such thing. Wow! Big brother all the way. Expect rectinal scans now if you want to play Solitaire.

More fun stuff to come unless I just give up on backup and simply ditch everything and reformat the drive.