Software > Computer viruses and spyware
Problem With Trojan-aax5
SuperDave:
--- Quote ---HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OptionalComponents\IMAIL
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OptionalComponents\MAPI
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OptionalComponents\MSFS
--- End quote ---
Why do you want to edit those keys. Messing around in the registry is a very dangerous practice.
PixelOz:
Cause those keys permissions were screwed up. They were locked because the permissions that were supposed to be there were removed. I checked this against my Windows XP Home machine and they had permissions that in this laptop machine had been removed for whatever the reason.
They had to be fixed cause they were preventing the Acrobat Reader from updating because they were locked and the reason they were locked was because of the missing permissions so I gave those keys the same exact permissions with the exact same settings of my Windows XP Home machine.
When I did that the keys went back to the way they were supposed to be and they behave and look as they behaved and looked in my XP Home computer. When I put the permissions back the keys changed cause they only had one icon that gave me an error message when I tried to access it and now they show all the icons that are supposed to be there just like in my machine and they can be accessed just like in my machine.
They had to be fixed cause if not the Acrobat couldn't update and that would leave the vulnerabilities in the Acrobat Reader without counting the fact that that abnormal behavior in those keys could potentially cause trouble with other software other than Acrobat Reader.
After fixing the keys the Acrobat Reader updated normally and did not gave me the two locked keys errors that it gave me before in the previous update attempt.
I fixed them using information on other places on the Internet that said how to fix that specific problem so I tried it with the first key of those three knowing that all that I had to do to put it back the way it was was to remove the permissions I gave the first key which is very easy to do.
After giving that key the permissions it started to look and behave normally so I proceeded to do the same to the other two locked keys which had also the missing permissions as the other key. If this went wrong all I had to do to put it back the way it was before was to remove the permissions I gave them.
I gave the same permissions that those keys had in my PC with the exception of course that one of the permissions name was different in this computer (the user permission) cause that is supposed to be like that because of the different user names.
It is not that I’m going over the registry and changing and deleting keys like crazy because I feel like so cause I never do that. What I did was an informed decision and it’s something I did carefully and it fixed the existing problem not something random and it is not either that I take every piece of information that I see on the web as true cause I know that that is far from reality. I always use judgment when doing so and I weight my options and doing that I have been able to fix countless computer problems in my computers and those of friends.
I’m not a newbie with PCs, I have been working with PCs since DOS 2.10 and boy have I fixed things in peoples computers, ufff! And back there it was more difficult to install hardware cause there was no plug and play and it had to be setup manually, now software setup was relatively simple cause software and the OS was way simpler back then.
That I make mistakes sometimes, yes but I learn from them and I learn rather quickly. For example you told me that it wasn’t a good idea to use registry cleaners so I went to read about the subject and I made the decision not to use them anymore cause from what the info says they are not worthy but I was using Eusing registry cleaner for some time cause it never gave me a single problem with my PCs and I used it in several and I never had a problem with it cause if I had noticed that it gave me problems then I would have stopped using it a long time ago but my PCs were running fine and have been running fine for quite a while.
Now I read more info on the subject and made the decision not to use it cause it seems to me that it really is not worth it.
So what is the worst that can happen if I make too big a mistake with a PC in terms of software, to reinstall the OS and the applications?, that is what I have to do and I installed operating systems enough times with all the PCs I have and those of my friends so I know my way around that so it doesn’t bother me but the truth is that I seldom have to do that cause I know my way around PCs and I’m not afraid to work and experiment with them and I know how to do a lot of things with them, like I said I seldom have to reinstall Windows or an OS specially as of lately cause with the years I have learned to give PCs good maintenance and I always make periodic backups of my data files to DVDs to prevent problems just in case.
Now here and there I do run into a problem with a PC that requires consulting someone with more understanding of them like you for example and of course the result of solving every problem is that you learn more and become better and better at solving them.
Now this PC was given to me in a very bad state and I was able to solve most of its problems and you solved some of the last ones but see that it took about two weeks of diagnostics and messing with it to fix it and put it back to normal operation.
In my case with my PCs I would have taken a completely different approach if they were that badly screwed up, I would have formatted the disk and reinstalled Windows. Why? Cause I would have had the OS and the applications up and running and fully configured in two days, three at worst (seldom the case) and I mean with everything like custom cursors, wallpapers, Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, Media Player, all the Windows updates, Fonts, plugins, scripts, etc. etc. etc. do you see? only two days instead of a week and a half or two to fix the mess that this PC was but it just happens that my PCs do not get into such a bad shape.
This one had over 60 different viruses and I don’t mean the different copies of a single virus that an antivirus application normally finds cause it can find sometimes hundreds of copies of a single virus, I mean over 60 different viruses among a very fragmented disk, disk errors etc. etc. etc. and it’s not uncommon for me to find PCs brought to me by other people in such a state, though this one in particular have been one of the worst unfortunately that is how the virus problem has grown nowadays and people lack of understanding of proper PC maintenance knowledge aggravates the problem very badly.
So I have to take decisions to fix a PC and try to find the best info possible and then proceed to do the best I can cause I can’t definitely spend a month fixing a PC, in the worst case scenario I have to reinstall it, in this case if it had come to that I would have been forced to borrow a USB external CD-Rom drive but like I said I seldom if ever have to do that.
In this case I was able to bring it back to work normally with your help but normally I would recommend reinstall not because not knowing what to do to fix them but because in the state in which I find the computers that are brought to me these days it is really much faster just to reinstall everything, way, way faster.
And then people many times do not make backups of their user generated files thinking that hard drives should last forever. Boy have I lost hard drives over the years, they are working fine and then the next moment they go CRASH even with good care (I try not to bump the desk were a chasis is or to bump into their cases when they are in the floor and I handle them very carefully when installing them) but people seem to believe out there that HD are impervious to failure, ufff! And then I have to try to save their data files and in a way that they do not infect the media that they are transfered to and then check that media afterwards for possible infections.
I have found it so common to encounter viruses in USB storage media and other media that belonged to other people that I recommend to most people to disable the autorun feature completely from their PCs (I will do that in this PC too).
Sorry for the long post but I put this here with the hope that other people out there reading this learn from it to do proper PC maintenance and data backup. That is a must so they don’t find themselves in a precarious position with their precious data and some of that stuff like cherished photos and videos are priceless to them. We just do the best we can to fix these messes. :o
PixelOz:
Secunia was run and it found the Flashplayer needed an update. When I tried to run the Flashplayer Update from Internet Explorer it gave me an error that it could not be installed I then proceeded with the manual installation and it went OK.
I don't know where the error came from. Anyway I think that the system files in this computer should be checked but it doesn't have a CD-ROM so I'll see if later on I'll be able to do that.
Anyway Secunia also told me that Firefox was version 3.6.8 and that it needed to update to the newer 3.6.9 version it but I opened Firefox and used the checked the update feature and it told me that it was the latest. I checked the About screen of Firefox and it told me that it was the latest 3.6.9 version so I guess that Secunia failed for one reason or the other to detect the correct version.
The other application that Secunia told that it needed an update was IE 8 but I went to the Windows update page and ran it and it didn't list any necessary updates, only a few optional software ones and I had installed all the corresponding ones and that was it but there was no other update for IE 8.
So that is about it.
The only other problem that I keep having is that the audio in this PC sounds very weird. The Realtek onboard sound sounds stuttering all the time. It sounds like its vibrating very fast all the time, it sounds intermittent very fast all the time so I'm going to reinstall the audio drivers to the latest version to see if that corrects the problem but other than that the computer is running pretty normal and stable.
SuperDave:
You can check the files without the OS disk. Just run the SFC and if there are any files corrupted, it will ask for the disk. If not, you'll know the files are ok.
Do you have an XP CD?
If so, place it in your CD ROM drive and follow the instructions below:
•Click on Start > Run and type sfc /scannow then press Enter (note the space between scf and /scannow)
*Let this run undisturbed until the window with the blue progress bar goes away
SFC - Which stands for System File Checker, retrieves the correct version of the file from %Systemroot%\System32\Dllcache or the Windows installation source files, and then replaces the incorrect file.
PixelOz:
I did give it a system files check and luckily it didn't have any errors so that's great. So I think we are good with that.
Also I downloaded the audio driver and reinstalled it and the PC it's sounding OK again. It seems that there was some corruption of one or more of the audio drivers files, perhaps from one of those corrected disk errors or perhaps for another reason but that is fixed.
It is possible also that some of the files from the previous version of the Flash player had been affected too but has been corrected already. The problem could have been for the Flash player files cause the updating error happened with both IE8 and Firefox. It seems to be OK now.
I already deleted the previous restore points and created a new one apart from the automatically created one by the system.
WOT has been installed.
Spyware Blaster was installed and configured.
I think that we are good. I think that this is a wrap. What do you think?
I think that we are done with this PC.
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