That’s belief based. Look to your browser first. XP is fine, if you work it. And avoid risky behavior like disclosing personal information on the WorldWideWeb! I have had similar very bad experiences with Chrome far too many times to even consider using it again.
I would recommend a pave-and-reload with XP, fully patched (it is false to claim “no new XP updates”, as I get them still — not every day anymore, but they still come in), a decent, minimally-intrusive AV like AVG, disable Shockwave Flash with extreme prejudice (it has always been a data-miner!!), and use FF for the WWWeb, Thunderbird for E-mail, and never EVER post anything online that you wouldn’t write on a poster board & hang in the Food Court at your local mega-mall. I set ‘Options-Content-Block Pop-Ups’ and under ‘Applications’ I set every single one to “Always Ask”. Try to remember that the things you let your browser do “for you” is like the things I do “for a cheeseburger”. You can’t really grouse when the person who is in charge of your browser (i.e. not you if you turn on automated features) decides his/her interests outweigh yours.
I’ve never had anyone offer to pay me to support Chrome, but if anyone does, my recommendation will be the same: Don’t. IE is better than Chrome for most everyone I know; I won’t touch either, but neither can touch FireFox. FF is better supported, better suited to safe human-Internet interface activity, and better available to the End User for configuration and maintenance.
I think it’s also important to remind people who like to use the Internet as their personal shopping mall, that the Internet was designed to survive a Global Thermonuclear War and still provide full, unrestricted communication between nodes. As a popular meme goes, “The Internet interprets censorship as damage & simply routes around it.” Same goes for “security”. There are people around who can decode an https: stream in real time, so this belief in “online security” is also not founded IRL.
I’ve tested 7 — it’s cute but not ready for prime-time even now. 8 was stillborn and 8.1 didn’t even get started good before MS jumped right over 9 to 10 (not the first time MS ignored a next-in-sequence version number — NT started life at v3.1!!), which is still nascent enough to be a guaranteed bug-fest, at least until SP3 or 4 (at the rate they’re going in Redmond).
OTOH, if you prefer to believe that MS’s latest is their greatest, well 10 is just for you, and enable all the “cool features” & post all your confidential data online without worrying. You “don’t have anything to hide”, right? So spread that account number, SSAN, mother’s maiden name (don’t make a pirate look it up on Ancestry.com) and everything else about yourself. Just try to remember that “automatic” actually means “someone other than you gets to decide”.
Still on XP but using Firefox. MS gave lots of red flags about the end of support but I still get monthly MS virus/malware checks and the odd other update. MS is not putting more money into new fancy XP stuff but MS Essentials also still works and gets updates. just not fancy changes any more.
but ya also have AVG and run malwarebites every so often, but so far so good.
Thanks Raccoon City, seems to works well.
Update: Since adding/upgrading latest version of Chrome, AdWCleaner, AdBlock, and updated Malwarebytes I’m back on track and viewing the web comfortably again. All is good.
The AdBlock for Chrome is Great. What a difference! (why didn’t i think of that)?
Thanks for all the tips guys. 
run jrt too.
its the complement to adwcleaner.
malwarebytes and super antispyware.another free complimentary pair.
avast free or panda free.
Thanks, I’ll put that on my do list. So far, battin’ a thousand on performance since upgrades/additions.
First problem i see is your using google Chrome. Its the worst browser since the failure of internet exploder. i use Firefox with Ad-block plus, best combination ever. i tried Chrome once, and uninstalled it after 1 day of use.
^ 
I’ve seen before but it makes me laugh anyway.
i rarely try to remove severe malware infections anymore unless its some special purpose industrial machine without means to easily reinstall.
i love those.facility owners who wont spend a dime on maintenance or backups but will spend lots to put out the fire.
sounds like this machine should be backed up on a machine with up to date antimalware/antivirus to save your docs,pics,ect then formatted and reloaded.
you may spend less time doing this than trying to get rid of the crap.and you know you are starting clean.
as for zombie malware yes a few can write an hpa and hide there but something has to be executed to bring it out of hiding.
tools exist to detect and remove the hpa but this is a rather rare thing.i have seen it once and i suspect it was an inside spy job.
use firefox with 3rd party cookies off,dump everything else end of session,and use ccleaner,malwarebytes,super antispyware,avast or panda.
both those sites seem to be more into selling the software they “recommend”
one of those looks way to much like the classic fake antivirus malware!
this would be spyhunter.