Ok here's the news. I booted into safe mode + networking and ran through scans on AVG, SpyBot, and MalwareBytes simultaneously. One of these three programs removed the infection, but I believe it was SpyBot as it detected a fraud. This antivirus program is a definitely a fraud. MalwareBytes probably also did the job though I did pay much less attention to it than SpyBot. AVG ran in a command-line window so I didn't pay attention to that at all. Whatever, one or more of these programs did the job.
I am happy I got my computer back.