Alright, fellow technibblers...got one for you and I know you guys know the answer.
Customer calls me saying that none of his applications are working. He has Norton 360 and a few days ago, it had a pop-up that it found a virus and it needed to reboot to finish quarantine or something to that affect (he did not remember). After the computer rebooted, none of his applications worked. A pop-up would asked what application would you like to open this file. Essentially, no .exe files were working.
I get the computer (a Dell desktop with XP Home media) and try to run my list of virus scanners, autoruns and process explorer. These programs were running off a USB stick. None of those programs would work. However, I was able to run the SuperAntiSpyware portable (which is a .com file) on the computer. It found a "2009 XP Antispyware - Trace" rogue file and a bunch of other adware and malware type files. SAS went to reboot after it was finished, then I was not able to boot into the regular O/S. I was only allowed to boot in the safe mode. After trying several times to get into regular O/S and too much time, I noticed that I could boot in last known configuration. (Stupid me thought that was not an option, because I move the option highlighter too fast that it did not highlight or I didn't see it).
Well, now I boot into regular O/S (non-safe mode) and I ran SAS portable again...It did not find the XP 2009 Antispyware file, but it is still finding other malware. It deleted all those and reboot was fine. Additionally, any Office type files that customer had on desktop had a blue box with white ">>" in the corner of the icon (any ideas what that means). Oh yes, the .exe files are now working.
I am still going to try some boot cd type antivirus programs tonight. I would like some suggestions of what else I should do or what I should have done first. I have never encountered this problem (non working .exe files) before.
Thanks for your assistance.
Customer calls me saying that none of his applications are working. He has Norton 360 and a few days ago, it had a pop-up that it found a virus and it needed to reboot to finish quarantine or something to that affect (he did not remember). After the computer rebooted, none of his applications worked. A pop-up would asked what application would you like to open this file. Essentially, no .exe files were working.
I get the computer (a Dell desktop with XP Home media) and try to run my list of virus scanners, autoruns and process explorer. These programs were running off a USB stick. None of those programs would work. However, I was able to run the SuperAntiSpyware portable (which is a .com file) on the computer. It found a "2009 XP Antispyware - Trace" rogue file and a bunch of other adware and malware type files. SAS went to reboot after it was finished, then I was not able to boot into the regular O/S. I was only allowed to boot in the safe mode. After trying several times to get into regular O/S and too much time, I noticed that I could boot in last known configuration. (Stupid me thought that was not an option, because I move the option highlighter too fast that it did not highlight or I didn't see it).
Well, now I boot into regular O/S (non-safe mode) and I ran SAS portable again...It did not find the XP 2009 Antispyware file, but it is still finding other malware. It deleted all those and reboot was fine. Additionally, any Office type files that customer had on desktop had a blue box with white ">>" in the corner of the icon (any ideas what that means). Oh yes, the .exe files are now working.
I am still going to try some boot cd type antivirus programs tonight. I would like some suggestions of what else I should do or what I should have done first. I have never encountered this problem (non working .exe files) before.
Thanks for your assistance.
