Hi,
A couple of days ago, I apparently got some adware/trojan on my computer.
I was getting pop up messages saying that 'your computer is infected with spyware', or something like that. If clicked, they would open some website advertising protection.
So I ran a casual ad-aware and a trojan search which turned up some stuff, and removed it.
Then windows reported that some file(s) have been replaced with another version. I poped in my WinXP cd and I assume that it restored the files.
At that point explorer.exe crashed and it keeps crashing whenever I try to execute it (such as windows startup, etc).
I assume that the malware has modified certain shell files and the registry and so when the files got restored things became corrupted.
The error messages are typical and vary between "ref. memory at ..... couldn't be read" and "...encountered an error.... has to close...", also suggesting corruption.
I have tried:
- safe mode
- full windows reinstall (without formatting)
- reinstalling IE6
- various malware searches
- some config/registry modifications
- and a bunch of other stuff
nothing works.
I'm pretty sure that the malware is now gone. And I'm pretty sure that it is not the explorer.exe itself that is crashing, but some other module/process that is making it crash.
Third party shell replacements do work.
When ever it starts it works for about 2-3 seconds and then it crashes.
Everything else works fine, and if you open a folder window during those 2-3 seconds you can use it as long as you stay in that window (it freezes eventually) I had to use task manager --> new task, to run programs.
And very recently, I accidentally found a strange little fix. If during those few seconds you right-click the floppy shortcut, then the explorer does not crash and stays rock solid, untill you have to restart it. (clicking folders does not work, but I'll have to check that again)
I'm sitting here with NTFSDOS Pro disks, thinking about the ultimate solution to all windows problems, but I'd rather avoid it, obviously.
So if you have any ideas on how to get the explorer to work, it would very appreciated. Thanks.
A couple of days ago, I apparently got some adware/trojan on my computer.
I was getting pop up messages saying that 'your computer is infected with spyware', or something like that. If clicked, they would open some website advertising protection.
So I ran a casual ad-aware and a trojan search which turned up some stuff, and removed it.
Then windows reported that some file(s) have been replaced with another version. I poped in my WinXP cd and I assume that it restored the files.
At that point explorer.exe crashed and it keeps crashing whenever I try to execute it (such as windows startup, etc).
I assume that the malware has modified certain shell files and the registry and so when the files got restored things became corrupted.
The error messages are typical and vary between "ref. memory at ..... couldn't be read" and "...encountered an error.... has to close...", also suggesting corruption.
I have tried:
- safe mode
- full windows reinstall (without formatting)
- reinstalling IE6
- various malware searches
- some config/registry modifications
- and a bunch of other stuff
nothing works.
I'm pretty sure that the malware is now gone. And I'm pretty sure that it is not the explorer.exe itself that is crashing, but some other module/process that is making it crash.
Third party shell replacements do work.
When ever it starts it works for about 2-3 seconds and then it crashes.
Everything else works fine, and if you open a folder window during those 2-3 seconds you can use it as long as you stay in that window (it freezes eventually) I had to use task manager --> new task, to run programs.
And very recently, I accidentally found a strange little fix. If during those few seconds you right-click the floppy shortcut, then the explorer does not crash and stays rock solid, untill you have to restart it. (clicking folders does not work, but I'll have to check that again)
I'm sitting here with NTFSDOS Pro disks, thinking about the ultimate solution to all windows problems, but I'd rather avoid it, obviously.
So if you have any ideas on how to get the explorer to work, it would very appreciated. Thanks.
It happens from time to time.
