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Old 11-11-2005, 04:38 PM   #1 (permalink)
MikeSty
The Computer Kid :D
 
Location: 127.0.0.1
Outside of the box thinking?

So I've been assigned to work on an average home desktop running WinXP, a machine that would usually come in as a quick and easy maitenance job. You know, destroy spyware/virii, delete some icons and other bad stuff, etc.

I was told that the machine "locks up when you get to the desktop", and I booted it up, and on all five users accounts, it certainly did. No problem, I thought, I'd just boot up into safe mode, run MSCONFIG, wipe all the nasty crap out and I'd be on my way to my usual domination of icky stuff.

Boy was I wrong. Safe mode cut out the majority of the crap, but whatever the hell was causing the UI (explorer.exe, namely) to spazz was still running. In fact, I was able to use CTRL+ALT+DEL (keep in mind, start menu doesnt work, icons don't work, keyboard shortcuts except ctrlaltdel dont work. the UI is completely frozen.) to get to MSCONFIG and disable what was surprisingly still running.

Of course, when I rebooted, the crap came back and the UI was locked. I manually deleted them from the registry. They came back. I went as far as killing all of the services. They came back. Keep in mind, I AM using the same user (administrator, which no one is using, I use this so A) I have all access and B) if I f'ck something up, it won't be anything personal at first) every time.

Tis been a while since I found a problem in this genre that really has stumped me. Any outside of the box suggestions? Or am I really gonna just have to sit down and use DOS scrape off the fungus?
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