djflish

I've recently had a bit of trouble with some nasty viruses, which I managed to get rid of, but now have a few things that aren't quite right. I'm using Win XP Home Ed and to get to this point I have run Spybot S&D, Lavasoft Adaware, SpyHunter, SuperAntiSpyware, SpyNoMore, AVG, roguefix, SmitFraudFix, CCleaner and ATF-Cleaner (phew!)

1. This is the worst one, and the reason I can't find out how to fix the others! When I use Google or Yahoo to search something and click on one of the results, it doesn't open the link, but opens another window with some random site. It doesn't always work when I copy & paste the URL either. I can only access sites from my favorites (like TFP )

2. My hard drive is nowhere to be seen in My Computer. I can access it through Run and it's there under Disc Management, I just can't get it to show.

3. The programs in the startup file have stopped 'starting up'.

4. I can't use notepad anymore, everytime I try there is a Data Execution Prevention.

5. Everytime I reboot the quick launch links are reset to alphabetical order, not the one I set.

If anyone can help point me in the right direction on any of these I will be forever in their debt.

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Europes two great narcotics, Alcohol and Christianity.
I know which one I prefer.

MexicanOnABike

have you tried COMBO fix? it worked fantastically to clean out a computer I was working on. it's a super tool that removes almost all malware. very good.

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MikeSty

Sounds like you're really having a lot of problems. Thanks to the guy above who suggested Combo Fix, i'll throw that in the toolbox.

I was JUST at a friend's house and he had a similar problem. He is on Vista with IE7 and I was looking for things via search (which defaulted to Yahoo) and I was clicking the links for the search results and a popup would come up. I forget the name of the site, but if you say it and it's the same one I'll probably recall it ... obviously. After closing, trying again, closing, I found that it would work.

I immediately suspected some kind of BHO infiltration, so I checked the add-ons and found something suspicious. I tried to nuke it with Spyware S&D (it picked it up) and it wouldn't leave.

Are you running IE7, or IE at all? If so, check the addons to see if there's anything that looks funky. The one I saw was a jumble of numbers.
I hate to jump on the Firefox bandwagon, because there's all this evidence and hard numbers that illustrated the memory leaks made it lame, but I seriously have never had any problems when people use it. I've had to deal with dozens of BHOs infiltrating IE7 though :-/ I have to advise giving that a whirl.

But maybe you've already got Firefox and then I've really got nothing good to say, other than download a program called HijackThis and post the log here or on a HJT specialty forum where people will take a crack at your stuff.

NeoRete

I hate to say this (because I typically don't), but offhand it sounds like your registry might be hosed after removing malware and you might be better off to consider backing up your files, wiping, and running a clean install of windows XP. You could definitely try to track down all the issues you're currently having (and I think you'd find quite a bit of help here to do just that), but if those are already problems you can find, you need to ask yourself how long will it take in comparison to fix those problems than to just start from scratch, and if you would have to fix even possibly more problems down the road that aren't apparent yet.

Not probably the first advice to take, but something to consider at least; that and I second MikeSty's advice about Firefox.

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djflish

I'm using Maxthon browser, but the same thing happens with IE. I was guessing I'd need to do a bit of registry editing, I had to do enough to get to this point! I managed to access a site with COmbofix, but another side effect is that I can't download anything! (it won't connect to any sites server)

I've been considering formating as a distinct possibility, but it's going to be more of a last resort.

__________________
Europes two great narcotics, Alcohol and Christianity.
I know which one I prefer.

NeoRete

Reformatting is a big hammer to wield.

I just thought of something useful if you have your XP disc: you can preform a windows repair installation.

Good set of instructions here (also where the quote came from). I've had luck in the past with it, as long as I was sure that the machine had been cleaned up first (and always had backed up before I tried it).

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Charlie was a chemist but Charlie is nomore, what Charlie thought was H2O was H2SO4

djflish

^^I think I might give that a try. With regards to the startup issue, they are running in the processes, but nothing is actually happening

__________________
Europes two great narcotics, Alcohol and Christianity.
I know which one I prefer.

Lasereth

Man your XP install is hosed. You would be better off reinstalling at this point. The startup programs not launching is caused by a virus (even if the virus is removed, the damage remains). If my PC was doing that I would have reformatted a long time ago!! It only takes about 30 minutes to reinstall Windows XP. I know it takes a long time to reinstall your programs but it might be your best option.

Hain

I'd recommend running DBAN on your drive before reformatting it. This ensures that nothing from the drive can be found, which means the spyware that could reside anywhere. Think of it as a fool proof solution to make sure you don't improperly reinstall windows.

As always back up important data from the drive.

MexicanOnABike

and for drivers, as long as you have a dvd player, get DRIVER PACK's latest drivers. you simply let your computer get all the drivers from your dvd and it finds it all. it's pretty amazing.

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