Hi!. New to this but in DESPARATE need of HELP - EXPLORER.EXE problems

[Cathy Murphy]

Hi! I am new to this but from what I have seen I feel confident that someone can come to my rescue.

My son's computer has decided to have a heart attack and no matter what I do/have done nothing has helped.

On 1/01/06 he started his computer and carried out his usual antics, MSN, surfing the web, downloading music etc. The computer was turned off for a couple of hours and when he rebooted it the only thing it does is go to his background, no 'START' button/menu, no icons what so ever. The only thing that comes up is a message as follows:

EXPLORER.EXE - Application error.
the application failed to initialise properly (Oxc0000022) Click on OK to terminate the application.

About 5 minutes later the following message appears:

RUNDLL
Error loading newdev.dll.
Access is denied.

I have restarted in Safe Mode, gone through all temp folders, history, checked every possible place for strange files. I have run HJT, ewido, spysweeper and numerous other cleaning things.

The computer has AVG free which picked up several trojans and viruses. These have been dealt with.

After spending many hours over the past couple of days and losing lots of sleep I have come to the end of my rope.

Can anyone help me. Any assistance would be greatly received.

Regards

Cathy

[DMR]

The errors you're experiencing could be due to a few different things, so it might take some work to pinpoint/fix the exact cause. Can you help us narrow down the possibilities, please?

1. Was the spyware/virus cleaning done after the problem appeared, or before? Can you tell us the names (or even the symptoms) of any of the infections?

2. Run the System File Checker to see if it detects any missing/corrupt system files; instructions for/explanation of the SFC utility are here). If problems are found, it may prompt you for the XP install CD in order to retrieve good copies of the files it needs to refresh/replace.

3. Did anything else occur just prior to the errors occuring which might have contributed to them (new programs installed, old ones uninstalled, other changes to the system). Without making him feel like he's done something wrong, ask your son if he can shed some light in this regard.

4. How does the computer work when booted in to Safe Mode as opposed to when booted normally?

5. Open the Event Viewer utility in your Administrative Tools control panel and look through your System and Application logs for entries flagged with "Error" or "Warning". Double-clicking on such an entry will open a properties window with more detailed information on the error; post that info here. To do so:

In the Properties window of a given entry, click on the button with the graphic of two pieces of paper on it; the button is at the right of the window just below the up arrow/down arrow buttons. You won't see anything happen when you click the button, but it will copy all of the details to the Windows clipboard. You can then paste the details into your next post here.

[Cathy Murphy]

Hi, DMR

Thanks for the reply.

I was lucky enuff to keep reading through the posts on your site and finally ran the smitRem.exe file in safe mode. Restarted the computer normally and everything was back to normal.

That was 2 days ago and my son happily reports that the computer is behaving itself beautifully.

Thanks for the help and thanks for having a site that is capable of helping those in need.

I will continue to visit as I am sure it will be a godsend for me in the future.

Cheers

Cathy

[DMR]

I was lucky enuff to keep reading through the posts on your site and finally ran the smitRem.exe file

The "smitfraud" family of infections that the smitrem program deals with can cause the errors that you were having; good work on finding that fix yourself! :)