Not a valid win 32 program... with a catch?

[Dragonxr]

hi all im having a verry tuff time trying to fix the current problem that i am facing... so i turn to you....

the problem is the " *.exe is not a valid win32 program"

the weird thing is that i can run any program after i have terminated explorer .exe in the taskmanager....

but heres the catch.... if DOS is opend to run or execute any bat-file or just running a program like combofix it will say "access denied"

ive tried multiple things to attempt to fix this problem with no success as of yet..

i have replaced explorer.exe, cmd.exe and command.com
ive tried using house call but it stalls about 20 min into the process..

--dragon

 

[evilfantasy]

Run a HijackThis scan and attach the log.

 

[Dragonxr]

hijackthis log attached..

ive also changed the name of the hijackthis.exe to prevent programs picking up the scan

 

[evilfantasy]

There is nothing in the HJT log.

What is the entire error message?

 

[Dragonxr]

ok there are multiple messages but 1 symptom...

for any .exe i get the message c:\PRGRAMNAME.exe is not a valid win 32 application. the same thing apples for any .com based programs.

if the program has a sortcut like outlook 2007 (office) it will say
(null) is not a valid win32 application

if i get cmd.exe or command.com running while explorer is not running i cannnot execute any .exe or .com based program through dos

most programs will work if i run programs through the taskmanager while explorer.exe is not running?



any ideas?

 

[evilfantasy]

Go to this page http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm

Look for the EXE File Association Fix and see if that helps.

Do you have your Windows CD to run SFC /Scannow?

 

[Dragonxr]

did the trick cheers

the SFC would not run but the EXE File Association fix worked

Cheers

 

[evilfantasy]

Glad it worked.

That is a handy page to have bookmarked.

Safe surfing......