having trouble with opening applications

[s4phir3_embl3m]

heyy everybody! just recently my computer has been acting strange. When i try to open applications such as internet explorer or AIM nothing happens. Its like it closes by itself. If anyone knows how to fix this problem please tell me. thanks

[Jsy3k]

Have you tried scanning your PC for viruses?
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[s4phir3_embl3m]

i tried that but it still wouldnt work

[Jsy3k]

[s4phir3_embl3m]

yeah its running but then the actual internet window doesnt appear. and also whenever i try to open aim i will see it in in the task manager as AIM.exe but then it quickly disappears.

[Jsy3k]

[thugangel]

I think you're just running in circles if you're uninstalling then reinstalling infected programs. No matter what, the virus still resides in your registry unless your virus scanner removed it for you or you removed it yourself.

This is definitely done by virii. I've had similar situation a month ago, except that I was running TeaTimer which inlcuded when SpyBot was installed and it helped somehow. When I ran a virus file, TeaTimer asked whether to allow some registry or not and I of course chose to always disallow the change. But the file extracted other virii and some are hiding in the Task Manager, thus infecting my computer. The changes I noticed were that my desktop background disappeared and when I try to change the wallpaper, the icons and the filenames looked like they became links and the Display Manager couldn't read the picture files I chose. Also, the pictures from My Pictures were gone.

I said similar because my Firefox and my Opera closes after opened for a few seconds. Surprisingly, my Internet Explorer doesn't do the same. Though, the homepage was altered saying that my computer is infected, etc. Since online virus scanners requires ActiveX, I was lucky to have the Internet Explorer working and run BitDefender's online scan. My system's performance looked like it returned back to normal after the scan finished but the noticeable problems still remained. So I deleted the files that the scanner didn't detect and the files it detected but couldn't delete. I even went through the registry and deleted a couple of values that are associated with the virii. I couldn't delete about three files even when I was in Safe Mode since Windows seems to need em to run (a file called xvid.dll, DX(something something).exe, and the other one i forgot) and there were still no improvement.

I could delete those files by running Windows on a different hard drive or partition but that would require me to install Windows on a different hard drive which I don't want to do. And sadly, Linux can't delete any existing files on NTFS since Microsoft don't want the other OSes to fully support their newer filesystems.

Even if I did delete those files, what are the chances that my system will be back to normal? I guessed around 10% so I went ahead and reformat my computer right away and started using linux, of course backing up needed files first.

[s4phir3_embl3m]

so i guess my only choice is too reformat my computer? *sighs* ohh wellz thanks everyone for your help!

[thugangel]

Well, if your Windows Explorer doesn't close, you can use that instead of the Internet Explorer and do what I was doing then maybe finish what I was doing. I'm not sure if it'll get you anywhere and it does take a lot of work. You can wait until you find another solution to your problem or go ahead back-up stuff and reformat; your choice.

Another choice would be giving it to Best Buy's Geek Squad... But that would require giving some amount of money for their service and there's this also possiblilty that they won't be able to fix your computer... o_o;

[Rhysticgon]

you dont have to reformat your computer, just run from safe mode and get rid of it; you have to get into dos from safe mod get it on a floppy or something

[thugangel]

lol, exactly what I did. Well... I didn't try running from a boot disk. Surely running from boot disk will delete those files since it's running from a different source. Still, what are the chances of fixing the problem(s)? There would definitely be other virii that scanners won't pick up, that'd remain in the system. How would one go on fixing the registry? You'd be lucky if you re-install Windows without reformatting. Even though you don't lose everything, you're gonna hafta re-install the programs that Windows have overwritten.

Assuming you're using Windows XP, if you have System Restore enabled (should be by default), you can try restoring it to any date before it started messing up your system. You can read about it here.

[Rhysticgon]

hmm you have a point, but if the virus isnt affecting the registry actively then it shouldnt be a problem. but most likely if it is virus thats prob not the case, but also I didnt take into a ccount that his/her computer si set up on a single partition/hard drive (whichever) I run one hard drive full of programs (separate hard drive from windows) keep a backupreg on the hard drive and I guess thats why I never really had to reformat when I had a virus... though sometimes I do it anyway so I can get rid of junk thats been collecting over tiem

Edit: sTill after thinking it over, though its probably a virus it may not be, could just be a bad memory leak or something

[s4phir3_embl3m]

thanks for trying to help you guys/gals but ive decided on reformatting my comp. theres just too many complications now that its just too much to just try and fixing it thanks though for all your help.