Let me start out by saying that I don't know jack when it comes to computer programing and all that but I have a serious problem.

I have a 2-3 year old Dell Dimension that has worked great for me for my basic needs of music, surfing the net, and online gaming. About a week ago I downloaded and installed a 90 day trial of Trend Micro so that I could scan my computer and see if I liked it. I have never had a virus program on my computer before I just periodically used the trendmicro houscall to get rid of spyware etc. Well I installed the full program and ran it a couple of times and of course there was all kind of stuff that it found from spyware to viruses etc. None of the things that it found had been affecting the way the computer ran however in all the blocking of different files and programs now my computer will not even log on. One of the many things that it had a problem with that may be causing it is that it found a virus in the winlogon file.

Symptoms: Running XP Pro and no longer goes to the regular log on screen that you can choose from 3 different profiles. Now it goes straight to the old school type in your username and password login screen. I type my password and it starts to logon, however just as soon as it starts loading my preferences it starts logging me off. It then sends me straight back to the login screen etc.

I do not have a recovery CD, just my re-install CD that it came with. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I can do or where I should take this thing to get it fixed. I am not concerned about programs that I have on it, I just want to make sure I don't lose pictures, files, music etc.

Any help would be appreciated, I live in Charlotte but I am coming to Raleigh this weekend if anyone would be interested in trying to fix it.

4/14/2009 5:23:49 PM

To recover the files you want I suggest using a Linux live CD and moving everything you want to keep to a USB thumb drive. After that, I would reinstall windows. You can probably restore system functionality without reformatting, but, depending on the cause of the problem, it may take more time than it's worth. It will be hard for anyone here to help you through system recovery without knowing exactly what was changed or deleted.

You might also try booting into safe mode and using the windows system restore tool.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/systemrestore.mspx

4/14/2009 5:35:16 PM

I am not familiar with a linux live CD but I will google it and try to read up about it. As far as safe mode I can't log onto that either, I tried that already.

4/14/2009 5:39:15 PM

So I volunteered to try my hand at fixing a buddies virus issues on his machine. I can get in to safe mode, log in as admin, run malwarebytes and clean everything out. Some virus is apparently disabling task manager. So I re-enable that while I am there, but once I boot back in to the user account (not admin) the viruses are still there, task manager is again disabled and the viruses seem to be eating so much of the CPU that I can start a scan and it will have done nothing after 4 minutes.

Any ideas?


Edit

As soon as I post that, McAfee seems to be running albeit at retarded snails pace.

[Edited on May 21, 2009 at 4:25 PM. Reason : .]

5/21/2009 4:20:30 PM

^ Save yourself a bunch of time and just reformat the damn thing.

5/21/2009 4:25:53 PM

Well, I suspect that is where I am going to end up anyway. First, I need to get the important stuff over to a backup drive. It seems like McAfee is working ok now, it has found 35 things, 18 of em AdClicker, the others being BackDoor.u, FakeAlert.b, W32/Generic.worm!im, Generic.dx, Downloader.gen.a, Downloader-BCF and it is about halfway through the scan.

My buddy should be capable of doing the reformat (he's done it before) so I'm just trying to get his machine back to use able so he can go through and figure out what he'll need after the wipe and what other stuff he might want to keep (bookmarks, etc) that I'm not going to bother to do for him.

5/21/2009 4:44:16 PM

^ Boot from a live CD and copy what he wants to an external dive. If the software is fucked, don't waste time fighting with it.

5/21/2009 4:55:56 PM

^^Are you scanning in safe mode? Also for the task manager thing, try running sdfix and combofix. I've seen them clear that up once or twice. In addition to Malwarebytes, run Spybot and HijackThis too. Then when they're finished, run CCleaner registry repair and also check the startup folder and msconfig to make sure the viruses haven't set themselves to autostart.

5/21/2009 5:30:11 PM

make sure you're disabling system restore.

5/21/2009 9:02:46 PM