Many windows problems...

Hello! Ok then as far as I know what is wrong… I pretty much cant open any admin tools, no firewall nothing like that. Background picture is black and cant get it back. Command prompt (CMD) "Cannot be found" Cant do any background or screen saver options. Also Firefox takes forever to open. And cant open windows defender. I cant do a system restore in normal or safe mode and I have tried many different points. I cant open spybot at all, and Norton wont start scanning unless in safe mode.

LDTate and I worked for a long time to clean my system, which is all clear now. But I still have tons of problems.

Please help I have too many issues and not enough solutions lol. I really dont want to restore my system, mostly because at the time I cannot find my discs…

Here is link to the other topic

http://forums.whatthetech.com/Many_issues_…is_t103141.html

Looks like you took a major hit with that, and as such I fear you only have 1 solution, sometimes a major hit can corrupt a system so badly that even when your clear of the infection, the remaining damage is just too severe to repair, and I suspect this is where your at, and as such the time and trouble you will use trying to rectify each issue will take much more out of you than a clean reinstall, because with corruption you have no idea just how deep it may be, and often theres a chain reaction where one part meeds another part to work and the like, so although it's not what you want to hear, my best advice is reinstall, it is the only sure way to get everything running right again, sorry I don't have any better answer for you.

Well said 8210GUY. I definitely agree.

Ok well thank you very much! Ill have to do my best to find those discs. If I cannot find them is there another way to get them otherwise?

Recovery discs can be ordered through the manufacturer of your computer. You may also have a recovery partition already on your computer that you can use. What make and model of computer do you have?

Hello! Ok then as far as I know what is wrong… I pretty much cant open any admin tools, no firewall nothing like that. Background picture is black and cant get it back. Command prompt (CMD) "Cannot be found" Cant do any background or screen saver options. Also Firefox takes forever to open. And cant open windows defender. I cant do a system restore in normal or safe mode and I have tried many different points. I cant open spybot at all, and Norton wont start scanning unless in safe mode.

LDTate and I worked for a long time to clean my system, which is all clear now. But I still have tons of problems.

Please help I have too many issues and not enough solutions lol. I really dont want to restore my system, mostly because at the time I cannot find my discs…

Here is link to the other topic

http://forums.whatthetech.com/Many_issues_…is_t103141.html

Hi, would you try a couple things?

Download Dial-A-Fix and open the .zip file. It will contain a file called dial-a-fix.exe. Run that file. When Dial-A-Fix first opens, it may open a windows listing restrictive policies on your computer. In that window, click "Remove All." Next, select all options in sections 1-5 and click, "GO." When Dial-A-Fix is finished, restart your computer and see if you can access your wallpaper and screensaver settings now.

EDIT: Didn't see you had Vista until now, please run dial-a-fix as Administrator, by right-clicking and selecting "Run as administrator"

As far as system restore goes, you will have to clear all those out. You can't use system restore after a malware infection. First of all, you risk loading malware back on to your computer. Second of all, malware always gets backed up in the system restore points and then will get deleted by anti-malware software which breaks the chain of restore points that you have. To clear the system restore points, you must go into control panel, open the System applet, and click on the "System Restore" tab. Turn off system restore for all drives, and click APPLY. It will warn you that it will delete all restore points. Allow it to do so. When finished, uncheck the box that says turn off system restore for all drives. If you see a slider bar in that window, slide it from 12% down to 1%, and click APPLY. That will fix your system restore points by removing them all, and creating new ones from this point on.

EDIT: Vista has your system restore settings located under the System applet in control panel and then on the left hand side of the screen look for "System Protection." Similar options are available in there to clear restore points out.

Lastly:

How to use CodeStuff Starter to manage services:

• Please download and install CodeStuff Starter
• Run Starter by finding it on your start menu after it is installed.
• When the program opens, you will see three tabs on the main screen (Startup, Processes, Services)
• Please make sure you are viewing the "Services" tab by clicking on it.
• Once the Services tab is open, please click the File menu and choose Save as HTML.
• Please save the file to a recognizable location with a recognizable file name. Your desktop is a good place.
• Attach the file in your reply to this message.

EDIT: This should work the same on Vista.

Lets see what we might be able to do with your system before a reformat.

I got a pop up window saying Dial a fix is not ready for vista yet. Look for updates on the website.

Starter Worked tho. File attached.

Yeah, don't worry about it at the moment. Dial-A-Fix should still allow you to run it, unless something has been updated with the version that you downloaded from what I have. The more I read about it, I don't believe it is effective on Vista anyways. I will try to run it on a Vista machine I have here and see how I got around that message before. For the time being, I'm going to look in your malware thread for a couple things, and am researching an alternative option for you to do something dial-a-fix does. How many progams are you having problems with? You were malware infected, and it would make sense that they would attack anti-virus programs, etc. Its likely you just need to uninstall those programs and reinstall them. Have you tried uninstalling all those? Ofcourse, I'm not sure you can uninstall Windows Defender on Vista. Did you install Internet Explorer 8? There was a previous thread where IE8 was causing slow loading in FireFox. How convenient for Microsoft.

Starter Worked tho. File attached.

I looked at critical services that I recognized, I don't see anything really wrong in this service listing.

I'm starting to think there may not be as significant of a problem on your computer as I originally thought.

I'm going to look through your malware thread to get a feel how bad your computer was.

Can you describe any other problems you might be having?

How is the system running overall?

Well its mostly windows applications not worked. Like degrag, disc cleanup, screen saver, command prompt. oh and windows firewall settings wont open, says "unidentified problem occured". But norton will open update and all that. It starts to scan but stops there, just doenst scan any files. Spybot wouldnt open at all, tried uninstall and reinstall. I had to rename malware bytes to get it to run. So pretty much everything lol. I have never had something hit me like that. Im always really cautious and all that jazz, but just got me some how lol.

You had to rename MalwareBytes to get it to run? Is this before or after your malware removal was finished?

This was before.

Hi, until you have any updates ill be out of town for a week starting tomorrow so dont close post if you update and I dont respond.

Well, this thread kind of slipped my mind. I don't really have any other suggestions. You have Windows Vista, and I'm not real fluent in Vista. All I know is that when it breaks, it breaks really bad. Someone tried to tell me once, "Vista is awesome! You couldn't break it if you tried." Anyways, if its not breaking itself, someone else is.

My suggestion is that you back up informaton that you want to save and perform a system recovery. Because it is Vista, it means it is a newer machine. I don't think I have seen a Vista machine yet that didn't have a recovery partition on the hard drive already.

You might not have the discs, but your system will have a recovery partition. With Vista, the option to restore your system to factory original software can be listed under the advanced startup menu that is found by press F8 before Vista starts to boot. I forget the exact options to select. I believe it is the "Repair your computer," option. Then, the system will boot to a recovery mode and in there, if the manufacturer has enabled it, will be an option to completely reinstall everything. I think it will be the bottom option.

Here's information on how to do it on a Dell, to give you an idea: http://www.ehow.com/how_2134715_dell-windo…y-settings.html

You may also need to press a special key combination as soon as you turn your computer on. It all depends on how the manufacturer set it all up.