A possible fix
A possible fx/workaround.
We clicked on a AIM link about pictures about 5 days ago. Yesterday I tried to run RegEdit and it did not stay open. I read some posts here, and found that TaskMgr and msconfig also would not open.
This is what I did, and now they stay open.
***Note I am not a computer expert nor do I play one a TV. But I do know enough to be dangerous.
Bottom line, what I think fixed the problem was the deletion of files in winnt/prefetch. Files named something like RegEdit????.pf, TaskMgr???.pf and so on.
Long Story,
I followed most of the recommendations of another post by getting the latest definition files for AdAware, VX2 cleaner plug-in, Spybot, McAfee, and Stinger. I uninstalled AIM and other programs I was unsure about. Booted in Safe Mode, Ran Adaware, Spybot, Stinger and McAfee. Deleted what they found. This took quit a long time.
Ran Regedit, yes it stays open in Safe Mode. Backed up
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
Then Removed entries like "WildTangent" and others I was un sure of.
Booted to Normal mode. Regedit still would not stay open. Based on another post, I copied winnt\system32\taskmgr.exe to C:\MyStuff and renamed it to myTMrg.exe. I then deleted winnt\system32\taskmgr.exe. Opened C:\MyStuff\myTMrg.exe, and it stayed open. I sorted by User Name and ended processes that had my user name and looked suspicious after I searched for where the EXE file was and did a properties on. I searched the registry for these file names and deleted most of what I found. I deleted the file, too. This is when I found the prefetch files and deleted them too. I rebooted, and everything stayed open. I downloaded and ran "windows-xp-prefetch-clean-and-control.exe".
Hope this helps someone.