I tried to do some work on my desktop earlier today and none of the programs would run. If I clicked on an icon I got a window which asked what program I wanted to use to open the program. Even if I went to the actual .exe program it wouldn't run the program. Any suggestions?
May be that your associations are botched up for the .exe. Here's a tutorial on correcting that with a registry edit: http://filext.com/faq/broken_exe_association.php
I would google "XP .exe wont run" and see what happens. I looked around briefly and found several recommendations that didn't include playing with registry settings. One recommendation was for Malwarebytes which I believe will correct registry settings for you. It's worth a try before getting into the DIY registry changes.
Good point...along with Malwarebytes I would suggest Ccleaner. http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner Although at this point, since .exe's won't run, might not be able get it installed.
I did attempt to load a program from disk and it would not run. I'll give your suggestions a try in a couple days. Thanks for the suggestions.
I hate to tell you it's a root kit. Sorry for being repetitive. There is a script running. TO verify this. Try and start task manager. If you can't you are infected. Reboot the machine in safe mode but enable networking. SYmantec may have a removal tool posted or Panda, even Kaspersky. Unfortunately after this damage is done shadow copies are even infected. So you can't take it to a previous version. IM me if you get really bad off.
Unfortunately it's too late. He will have to remove the HD and take it to another machine to remote scan with anything. Even then it will take up to 4 hours because the script running replicates itself on the fly.
I was able to open task manager, does that mean it is not a rootkit? I downloaded and ran malwarebytes and it found 16 infected files. I thought I saved the log so I could post but it didn't save. In any case, there was a "hijack desktop" in the registry. I tried rebooting and tried the .exe files and no go. I ran out of time so more tomorrow.
Go to http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm and download his registry file to fix the executable. It comes as a zip file, and so you might need to download it to another machine first to extract it. Once downloaded double-click to import it. Run Ccleaner like appcomm said and clean all temp files Run another complete scan with Malwarebytes (Updated of course). Go to http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner and run a complete scan and fix anything it finds. If it is still acting strange download Dr Web CureIt from http://www.freedrweb.com/cureit?lng=en and run a scan. Don't forget to update us
If you don't hit the right fix in the first couple of trys; All the time, softwares, and effort you spend trying to find and kill rootkits normally screws things up in the registry so bad you have to recover anyway. More so in XP than any other OS's. You can try F8 at boot up and choose "Last known good configuration". Normally doesn't fix a rootkit, but it's worth a shot. If all the suggestions don't work: check your hard drive for a recovery partition, , go to the PC manf. web site and search for recovery instructions on your model #. Back up your important files to a jump drive and scan that jump drive after the recovery before loading them back.
