Computer virus

So unfortunately my laptop contracted a horribly malicious computer virus. I think it actually came from a torrent file link that told me I needed some weird program to download in order to watch an episode of True Blood. All last Sunday was spent backing up all of my files, and I was lucky enough that the virus didn't attach itself to them. So now my computer has been shipped off to Tejas to have its hard drive wiped, and I am using a loaner iMac from N. Prior to this virus, I hadn't been running any anti-virus software on my computer, so let this be yet another lesson learned the hard way.