PCA Forums

I worked on a pc last week that had some trojans and what not on it. Ran the typical shotgun approach of malwarebytes, superantispyware, and avg scans. I got it cleaned up and the guy called a couple days later saying that none of the shortcuts on the desktop will work. I went by there and sure enough every shortcut opens the "open with" dialog box. You can't even get things to open from run box. Is there a quick fix for this or should I just reinstall and start fresh?

LOL, that was the same issue with my machine I worked on (see my thread). I was able to fix it by running system restore, using a restore point from 4 weeks ago (her last restore in the system). I then ran all the same programs you ran and it found only one file (a0.exe) or something like that and deleted it.

Thing is I cant get to control panel, add/remove/ system properties or anything. I get a win32/dll error on anything like that.

You can run System Restore from the Recovery console in Vista and Win7:
http://www.faultwire.com/solutions/usin ... _vista.php

XP is much harder. You have to manually copy the registry backup files from and old restore point before things got totally screwed up, then you will be able to run System Restore normally from Safe Mode: http://ramanathan.wordpress.com/2007/12 ... y-console/

FlyingPenguin wrote:You can run System Restore from the Recovery console in Vista and Win7:
http://www.faultwire.com/solutions/usin ... _vista.php

XP is much harder. You have to manually copy the registry backup files from and old restore point before things got totally screwed up, then you will be able to run System Restore normally from Safe Mode: http://ramanathan.wordpress.com/2007/12 ... y-console/

Ditto. That is what I used to restore it.

Well further work has revealed that this thing won't boot from a windows cd at all. SO i tried swapping cd drives then it won't get past post screen OR it boots on into windows. Checked in bios everything looks good. Jumpers are set right on cd. I dont know that else to do. This rascal is putting up a good fight. Any ideas?

last unit i had in last week was like that . I just f-disk it and started fresh .
there some new very nasty virus out there and im tired of them .i have been seeing more then my share of them as of late !

blade_146 wrote:Well further work has revealed that this thing won't boot from a windows cd at all. SO i tried swapping cd drives then it won't get past post screen OR it boots on into windows. Checked in bios everything looks good. Jumpers are set right on cd. I dont know that else to do. This rascal is putting up a good fight. Any ideas?

So it won't boot by pressing F8 after the BIOS screen?

Sounds like another issue may be happening, but could be a few things. Have you tried simply to boot with only the CD drive connected? If it still doesn't work, I suspect either the disc or some deeper problem in the computer.

There is no way any virus on the boot sector of the hard drive could prevent you from booting from a CD. That's entirely controlled by BIOS. You sure you have a bootable Windows disc?

Even if the BIOS boot menu defaults to the hard drive first, all computers have an override key that takes you to a boot menu that lets you select which device to boot from. For Dell's for instance it's F12. For many OEM mobos it's the ESC key.

FP Ive tried 3 different windows disc's and they all do the same thing. This thing has some weird shit going on. I've never had one that won't boot off a cd even after you the changed the drive out. Been at the hospital all night and ready to go to bed. I'll work on it tomorrow. Thanks guys

Reset CMOS maybe? Has to be a BIOS issue.

I'm going to try that this afternoon. If that doesn't help I dont know what to try. I'm not going to wipe until I know I can fix it. Jeesh I need a vacation. Bad

I know this is a bit crazy, but does the person's computer use a wireless keyboard/mouse? I've actually ran into this & almost went crazy until I realized that there was an issue with the receiver. That could be the problem here & would answer many things. If not wireless keyboard, is it at least sensing keyboard input (get into BIOS?).

No wireless anything. I have the pc at my house and he doesnt have anything wireless at his house either.