Urgent help required please!

[vertical]

I run a small home based business and my business PC all of a sudden has got into a trouble.

The day before yesterday a Windows Messenger was installed on my PC without me knowing about it. I tried to remove it and have removed it. After that I tried to remove everything with word “messenger” from the registry. PC was left running till the next morning and everything was working fine next morning but when I restarted the machine, various problems showed up all of a sudden.

I am not sure that what is happening to my PC is related to my registry clean up.

My desktop appearance has changed though I did not touch it. I cannot connect to Internet and found out that Network Connections folder is empty. There is not a single connection there.

Restore system does not respond. It gives me a message: “Restore system is unable to protect the computer. Restart the computer and try again” but it does not work.

Finally I’ve got to Control Panel > Admin Tools > Services and I’ve found out that ALL services but three (DCOM Server Process Launcher; Remote Procedure Call; TrueVector Internet Monitor) are disabled.

I tried to enable System Restore Serviced and Network Connections but I cannot. After I choose “Automatic” in Services Status and click “Start”, it gives error message: Could not start Network Connections( or System Restore in case of System restore) on local computer. Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely manner”.

I was able though to start Plug and Play service this way.

Please help!

OS: Win XP Pro SP2
CPU Intel 3.2
RAM: 1024

If any other information is required I am ready to provide it.

 

[fastco]

Boot from your Windows XP CD. Follow these instructions and see if that helps

https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic8356.html

 

[vertical]

Thank you for your prompt reply!

The problem is the CD will bed available for me only after the long weekend. Is there any other way to do something? Thanks.

 

[fastco]

You could go here http://www.bootdisk.com/ and download an XP boot disk and run some tests off of it like Chkdsk /f and FIXMBR but if Windows is corrupt then you really need the CD to fix it. You can also run SFC.EXE /scannow in windows from the Start, Run box but if it finds any corrupt or missing files you will need the XP cd.....

 

[vertical]

Thank you!

I will run the tests as advised and will post the results.

 

[vertical]

I tried SFC.EXE/swcannow in the Start > Run but it gives me: Windows cannot find "SFC.EXE/scannow". Make sure you typedd the name correctly....

Might it be I am doing it wrong? Thank you!

 

[vertical]

Really sorry!

I did not notice a space between SFC.EXE and "/". Now it is scanning. Thank you!

 

[fastco]

No problem, the space is hard to see when typed here.

 

[vertical]

Hi,

The scanning has finished suscessfully and did not provide any errors or logs. I hope it is a good sign.

Thank you!

 

[fastco]

Any Time.....Hope something works to fix your problem.

 

[altheman]

A virus could have attacked your pc. Follow this thread: https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic50981.html, and post a HJT Log in the Security and Web Section, but ONLY after following those instructions.

 

[vertical]

Thank you for desire to help.

My very first concern was also about a virus attack.

I have AVG antivirus software isntalled (updates every day two times). I scanned the whole PC in safe mode. No virus was found.

Unfortunately I cannot use an online scanner as I cannot connect to Internet. As advised above, network service does not work. The Network Connections folder is empty and connection cannot be established.