Locked hard drive

[asterose]

I have an Acer laptop with Windows 10 Home edition, 64 bit, and malware has locked my hard drive so that I cannot boot and I cannot even refresh or restore my Windows files.  I also cannot access most of drive C:, though I can the root directory and Windows.old, Windows.update, and temp.  But nothing else.  I've lost my Internet connection as well.  Is there any way to unlock the hard drive using DOS?  Also, it there a good editor for DOS?  I've looked around but so far haven't really seen anything promising.

Thank you for any help you may provide.

[Mark.]

sounds like ransomware.
do you have external backups of your data?

someone from the security team will be with you soon.

[Geek-9pm]

asterose,
You are using Windows XP, right?
My best recommendation for you u is the get another hard drive and remove the old drive. Install Windows XP on the new drive.

 Once you have dong that, you can proceed to remove the malware from the old drive. The old drive should be attached to a USB dater and made into an external drive. 

The viable alternative is to take your hard drive to a professional and have them recover the data. But it is rather expensive. But business people do it.  For more about this idea, Google for  "Hard Drive Data Recovery Service "

About using DOS to recovery a hard drive. That is not a good idea. 

[Mark.]

I have an Acer laptop with Windows 10 Home edition, 64 bit, and malware has locked my hard drive

[Geek-9pm]

My bad. (I say XP in the sidebar.)
Using another PC, you can download a free temporary copy of Windows 10 and put it on a USB. The PC you use must also be a Windows 10 PC.
With Windows 10 on a stick, go into BIOS on the trouble PC and have it select the USB device to boot. On a Dell you have to hit the F12 key before it stats the boot loader. You will get a menu that lets you select the hard drive, Optical drive or USB device. Boot from Windows 10 from the USB. It wil take awhile.At some point there is an option to repair or recover your system.

Here are two a vides:

USB Boot on Acer
https://www.google.com/search?q=Acer+laptop+boot+from+USB&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

Repair Windows from USB
https://www.google.com/search?q=recovery+windows+10+using+USB+flashdrive&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

Please come back and lets others know if it works for you.