Where'd Windows explorer go?! Nerds? Help??

[Darky]

I appear to be infected with something, electronically speaking that is, and it causes my start bar and all my desktop icons to randomly disappear. Its really freaking irritating! I've run HiJackThis multiple times and I keep finding a rnamfler.dll . I don't know what it is and it looks suspicious, what with the slouching around wearing dark glasses and whatnot, so I delete it. Scan again and it's back. Done that a few times. I've scanned 3 times in as many days with SpySweeper. 1st time, it found 3 traces. Was able to delete 2, 1 stayed in quarantine. 2nd scan the next day was clean. Still having problem though. Its running right now and has already found virtumonde adware. It not even halfway through its scan though. I can navigate around the computer using task manager and running programs from the file menu there. That's how I got IE up and SpySweeper, along with HijackThis. Any ideas??

 

[jaruble]

try restarting in safemode and running a virus scan.... good luck though it probably wont find anything and you may need to reformat... i had a buddy that had the same virus and we got tired of messing with it... quit lookin at all those dirty sites and you wont have this problem....

 

[Darky]

That's the funny thing, I've been stayin away lately, and now is when I get hit with something. If it happened like a year or so ago, no question, I'd know exactly how I got it.

 

[ethernet]

Reformat is and sell it and buy a mac!! No viruses or any troubles! :eeks1:

 

[Darky]

Reformat is and sell it and buy a mac!! No viruses or any troubles! :eeks1:

No more money either seeing as to how this is a 2 yr old laptop I bought for $800...typical Mac ran more like $2000...Thanks though! :laugh3:

 

[red91]

Slackware will fix that problem.

 

[ethernet]

No more money either seeing as to how this is a 2 yr old laptop I bought for $800...typical Mac ran more like $2000...Thanks though! :laugh3:

You could get a brand new Apple desktop computer for that price. But ok...

 

[Darky]

I use my laptop for work, compounding the irritation with this issue. I've thought of an Apple for a desktop, but I'm lazy. Have to learn again.

EDIT: just to clarify tho, I bought this new 2 yrs ago for $800. That's not what it's worth anymore. Other than this issue, its been pretty reliable.

 

[5-90]

He probably needs a laptop for the same reason I do - too much running around means desktop no worky...

Dig up your antivirus package - there should be a boot disk or instructions to boot from CD. If you suspect a virus and you don't have AV installed yet (and why not?) you'll have to "clean boot" to get it found.

If you're running XP, Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com) actually works fairly well against spyware and trojans - and you can get a 30-day trial of AVG antivirus/Internet security (www.grisoft.com, I believe) gratis.

Worst case - back up all your data onto a known clean hard drive, reinstall, and vaccinate. Then scan your backed-up data while it's still isolated on the secondary drive - since there is no operating system on the drive, your antivirus can go through everything without worrying about if it's in use at the time or not.

 

[Mudderoy]

It's hiding somewhere under a different name. When an infected program runs, it looks to see if that dll is there, if it isn't it puts it back.

I would load and run the Free version of AVG from free.grisoft.com, then run housecall from trendmicro.com.

Try looking up that dll you mentioned and see if it is a known malware, or virus. If it is someone has the instructions to remove it. If the malware or virus is randomly picking a name, to avoid the fix I mention above, then you'll need to figure out what it is doing to your computer, put that in a search and see if you can figure out what virus, malware it is, find the removal instructions and follow them.

You stand a good chance of AVG and trendmicro's housecall finding it and removing it from your system.

The quickest and least trouble way to resolve the problem is to reinstall windows and pick the format drive option. All your data will be lost, along with the virus and malware.

If you have this happen to you very often you might consider getting a 2nd hard drive. Get your primary hard drive set up the way you like it, then clone it to the 2nd hard drive. The next time you get infected, clone the 2nd drive to the 1st.

 

[Darky]

I've got Symantec Corporate for AV and Spysweeper for anti-spyware. Then I've got HiJackThis and some other stuff to try and kill anything that may get through still. Whatever is in there must've snuck through when they weren't looking.
Sidenote, what the hell is the point of a partitioned harddrive to do your recovery from if you still need the damned disks!! So, I have to go out and buy a couple DVD's (mine are all packed still as escrow has taken a full month longer than it was supposed to...) burn the discs and hope that the partition isn't infected.

 

[ethernet]

I use my laptop for work, compounding the irritation with this issue. I've thought of an Apple for a desktop, but I'm lazy. Have to learn again.
There isn't much to learn and in the end you will be MUCH happier. Everyone that I know that has switched would NEVER go back...

EDIT: just to clarify tho, I bought this new 2 yrs ago for $800. That's not what it's worth anymore. Other than this issue, its been pretty reliable.
Sounds like it is a good time to do a complete wipe of your computer and reinstall Windows XP. It's a good thing to do every couple of years.

Have you run SpyBot or AdAware? Both are very good spyware programs for PC's. I do computer repair for people around here and that is what I use. Also the free version of AVG mentioned earlier is very good.

Your best bet is to completely wipe your computer and reinstall. Download AVG, SpyBot, and AdAware before you wipe your hard drive. Burn them to a CD or put them on a thumb drive. That way once you have XP re-installed you do not have to get on the internet with out and anti-virus or spyware blocker to download them.

Another recommendation is to use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. It is more secure and safer than IE.

 

[RichP]

You can download a linux release onto USB key with clamAV, boot linux and run clam... Or just wipe windows out and reinstall a linux release, Ubuntu, Fedora core, slackware, etc. They all come with open office suite, firefox, email clients, etc. Simple install and if you don't like it just reinstall windows.

 

[Mudderoy]

You can download a linux release onto USB key with clamAV, boot linux and run clam... Or just wipe windows out and reinstall a linux release, Ubuntu, Fedora core, slackware, etc. They all come with open office suite, firefox, email clients, etc. Simple install and if you don't like it just reinstall windows.

This is good. If you know how to burn a CD/DVD getting a LIVE version of one of the Linux systems might be an easier alternative. The LIVE CD/DVD is bootable and older machines might not be able to boot from a USB thumb drive.

 

[Darky]

Have you run SpyBot or AdAware? Both are very good spyware programs for PC's. I do computer repair for people around here and that is what I use. Also the free version of AVG mentioned earlier is very good.

Your best bet is to completely wipe your computer and reinstall. Download AVG, SpyBot, and AdAware before you wipe your hard drive. Burn them to a CD or put them on a thumb drive. That way once you have XP re-installed you do not have to get on the internet with out and anti-virus or spyware blocker to download them.

Another recommendation is to use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. It is more secure and safer than IE.

I've been running SpySweeper and Symantec Corporate (basically Norton Anti-Virus without the friendly interface and no subscription fee). Would Ad-Aware interfere with SpySweeper? I've tried Spybot and it does interfere. Same with AVG.

 

[ethernet]

It shouldn't interfere. It's good to run more than one anti-virus and spyware blocker. No single anti-spyware program can say that they can prevent or fix all of the problems with your computer that may arise. Which is why having two seperate programs is good because one will catch something that another one won't.

 

[Darky]

I downloaded FireFox, which I'm on right now, and also got Registry Booster 2. I scanned the computer and it found 895 errors...so its cleaning that up. Ad-Aware will be downloaded soon also.

 

[RichP]

I downloaded FireFox, which I'm on right now, and also got Registry Booster 2. I scanned the computer and it found 895 errors...so its cleaning that up. Ad-Aware will be downloaded soon also.

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4114699/HawkPE-40_-_A_Live_WinPE_Linux_CD_Project
Download and burn it to cd then boot from it. Run your scan from it... Watch what you do because this has alot of utilities that can get you into major trouble, if in doubt cancel....

 

[Darky]

Ad-Aware takes forever. Its running on ym laptop (I'm using the work one right now) and at an hour in, it was only 60% through. Then I realized it was also scanning my removable hard drive. Adding an additional 60 gigs to the scan. However, its already found 203 infections. :scared:

EDIT:Ok, so 198 of them were cookies. Left those alone, but it still found this virtumonde that I've killed with SpySweeper twice already plus 4 other things, including 2 MRUs (which I have no clue what MRUs are). Soon as the scan stopped, all the desktop icons and start bar vanished. Again.

Microsoft OneCare is failing. I scanned my computer the other day with it before the problems started and it ran fine. Now the protection side won't run at all. Lots of people on their forums complaining about it, blaming Microsoft for it not cooperating with IE7. It works with IE7, it did for me the other day. I think it has something to do with the infection on my computer right now. Probably the people complaining have the same problem as me and just would rather blame Microsoft than accept that their computer's virus could be the problem...
BTW, Firefox is unfortunately not compatible with the OneCare scan.

 

[lancey3]

Ad-Aware takes forever. Its running on ym laptop (I'm using the work one right now) and at an hour in, it was only 60% through. Then I realized it was also scanning my removable hard drive. Adding an additional 60 gigs to the scan. However, its already found 203 infections. :scared:

EDIT:Ok, so 198 of them were cookies. Left those alone, but it still found this virtumonde that I've killed with SpySweeper twice already plus 4 other things, including 2 MRUs (which I have no clue what MRUs are). Soon as the scan stopped, all the desktop icons and start bar vanished. Again.

Microsoft OneCare is failing. I scanned my computer the other day with it before the problems started and it ran fine. Now the protection side won't run at all. Lots of people on their forums complaining about it, blaming Microsoft for it not cooperating with IE7. It works with IE7, it did for me the other day. I think it has something to do with the infection on my computer right now. Probably the people complaining have the same problem as me and just would rather blame Microsoft than accept that their computer's virus could be the problem...
BTW, Firefox is unfortunately not compatible with the OneCare scan.

MRU's are lists of things you most recently opened on your computer.

Step one: Boot in safemode w/ networking

Step two: update spysweper

Step three: run scan.

Step four: done.