Computer Troubles

I'm an idiot. A couple of weeks ago I was poking around on the web and I ended up on a website with a video that I was trying to watch. I'm not quite sure how I ended up there or where I went from a legitimate site to this one but it was really all downhill from there. A box popped up telling me that I needed a new codec, I wasn't careful enough to determine that this was actually a window pushed by the website rather then my browser. Anyway once that button was clicked there was no stopping the horrible programs that rendered my computer unusable. This crippling spyware also was nice enough to come along with an advertisement for a spyware removal program that could solve all my problems. Interesting little trick, I'm sure had I gone further with this game and actually tried to purchase this software online all sorts of crazy things would have happened with my credit card, luckily I'm only an idiot and not a moron. Anyway after a quick format of the partition which holds the OS and a reinstall of all my software I'm off and running again. It's a good thing that I setup my computer such that this would be an easy thing to do without losing any data.