In case of malware infection in latest windows OS, like win 10, which is the best course of action for complete disinfection - a factory reset using troubleshoot and recovery, a format of entire drive done with Windows built-in disk management tool, or a disk wipe done with third party data erasure softwares?
What are the differences between these three? If the infection has spread to the master boot record, which of these three, if any, should be able to fix that as well alongside OS infection?
Also, if I understand correctly, disk wipe and low level format are the one and the same for modern machines?
(Not taking any firmware or hardware malware into account, just OS and MBR infections.)
EDIT: I do not want to know how to run antivirus tools to remove the malware, or IF I should format, as the answers to other similar looking questions have stated. I want to know the differences between the three different processes of starting over and reinstalling Windows, and which one is the best bet for malware. I have seen the words formatting and wiping being thrown around somewhat interchangeably on the threads and forums, and I feel that the two processes are actually a little different, but I'm not sure. Can malware which isn't firmware/hardware and is limited to OS/MBR actually survive a format, such that I would need to use third party tools to perform complete disk erasure? Because from what I understand, after formatting, the data is pretty much gone until you run special recovery tools on it and even then it might be uncertain. What are the odds of OS infections persisting after format and not wipe? I am looking for an explanation on the difference a full drive format with disk management tool, and a disk wipe with third party tool can have on various types of malware, whether those differences are theoretical or low odds.
