Applications won't install at boot or, go polish your nails and wait

[Wrennika]

Hi all~
I got hammered by a bad spy-adware virus. Two browser hijackers and two other things, it was ugly. I swore a LOT, in two languages. After downloading helpful programs to get rid of it all, 4 days deleting files, having it all pop up again and again, hand culling the registry, getting advice from a very samrt friend who then went on vacation, swearing more and whatnot, I finally got rid of the damn things. First time in 10 years I got hit with a thing, I'm really careful. :(
What's left of this mess is: when I boot the comp up the icons appear on the desk top, Weatherbug will pull up like it's supposed to. AIM won't, Zonealarm won't. I can click the icons and do what ever I need to do from there, but if I put my cursor in the START box or icon area, it turns into that "I'm working" cursor. I assume because it's not done loading things from booting up yet. So, I can't get to my Programs and stuff. It will sit like that for 3 minutes or 3 hours, not a thing I can do about it. All of a sudden it'll let go and BAM, just finish pulling things up like it was supposed to. Meanwhile if I minimize anything I had going like a web page or Weatherbug that pulled up, it disappears. Since the whole Start Bar is a "working cursor" it's lost.
I read your boards and did a sfc /scannow check as suggested, went to the MS site and was told there's some file missing to run Explorer right, and put my service pack CD in. I don't have it, of course, I have the CAB files only. Meanwhile the Windows File Protection box won't close, so I have 4 of those sitting down below now and can't get rid of them unless I reboot, which I can only do by holding the comp's on/off button in for 4 seconds since I can't use my START button to shut down, since the "Thing" has the comp in it's grip. If I do a Ctrl-Alt-Del the processes are all listed. I have TWO cidaemon.exe (is that normal?). There is nothing at all listed in the Application list, not even Zonealarm which seems to have decided to join me and is working. I'm not sure where I as nosing around but the files that were missing in some list I stumbled on were those iecont.dll and iecontlc.dll

Any help is greatly appreciated before I take an ax to this thing. I fondly remember going "outside" before I got a comp, and if I didn't sit here till 6 am messing around all the time, maybe Outside is still there and I ought to go look? Maybe this is a sign from the gods?
thank you lots! Wren :cheesy:

[sealracer]

The situation sounds #^@(#!! beyond the point of no return. I would suggest format and reinstall. But im just a junior techie of course :D

[Catweazle]

Weatherbug IS your problem! It's where the bad bug came from!

http://www.pchell.com/support/weatherbug.shtml

Despite their protestations, MySearch is an invasive piece of Spyware.

Given the amount of fiddling you've done, and the possible damage that's been apparently caused by the "hand pruning" of the Registry, I'd suggest a refresh install of Windows at the least as a suitable course of action (Install Windows over the top of itself) followed by a thorough clean-out using the tools described in the "Helping Yourself" topic in the Security Forum section.

Uninstalling then reinstalling programs that do not function correctly is also a possibly useful procedure, but for goodbess sake don't reinstall any invasive 'freebies' such as the one you've mentioned.

Failing all that, I'd agree that a format and fresh install is possibly needed.

[DMR]

Yes, WeatherBug is a nasty- kill it.

As far as cidaemon.exe goes, that's a component of Windows indexing service. You don't need it, and it does bog down the system a bit, so you might want to turn indexing off:

Go to my computer and right click on the (NTFS) drives. Click properties and uncheck "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching" in the General tab. Repeat for all your (NTFS) drives. For the iecont.dll and iecontlc.dll issue, make sure you get the latest IE upgrades/patches/fixes; that should solve the problem.

[Wrennika]

Hiya! As sealracer so eloquently put it, things are *$&#%^ pretty good. (I said a bit more than that, in 2 languages :cheesy: )

I killed off Weatherbug and Movielink. I turned the indexing off on the drives (now that was pretty cool!). I lost the iecont.dll and iecontlc.dll-s in this mess so tho I do have the Service packs, I don't have those dlls and can't get the service packs since MS doesn't see that I need them if I have the Update page scan for updates. BUT this is what I have now, it's even more funner ;)

HijackThis and sfc /scannow show 2 files whose names are all boxes, lots of boxes, sitting in the Software/MS/WindowsNT/Current Version/Windows folder. Don't know if this is the dlls? If I go into the msconfig and uncheck them and say not to load them, msconfig just lopps back and up and on the next boot up and goes into Diagnostic mode all over again. As before I can get the icons and part of my Desktop up, then it all hangs, and the cursor turns to "working" if I put it in the START bar. The applications don't pull up, I cant get into my program folder. Eventually, maybe, somehow it'll jar loose and I can. When I boot up I get 5 or 6 screen saying that Desktop can't load or run the >boxes< files located in the registry so you're right, it's something that's not there to load. I don't know why telling it not to load it won't work then, but it seems it wasn't connected to Weatherbug or Movielink.

So I said *%&$^, and thought I'd do a reinstall over the existing XP. All went well for 20 minutes when at Stage 2 the installation stopped dead and closed. It went back to the desktop where I got a message that said the IE had stopped responding, and I had to exit. So I did. I went to the blue Start Up screen for XP where I was told I couldn't put XP on drive C because that partion contained another operating system. I told the computer it had XP on it, really it did. I don't know if because of the updates it's not "the" XP on the CD any more so it thinks it's different? So I got nowhere and don't know if this means I have to wipe the whole thing and install because of these two little Whatevers that just are messing up the Desktop? We having fun yet?

Thanks so much for all your help!!! I kiss your rings....

[Catweazle]

Wrennika, quite simply put I think your best move would be to wipe the lot and start over! Not because of those "two little Whatevers", but because of the amount of fiddling you've done to try and fix it. I suspect that you've right royally screwed over the Windows installation with dodgy software and excessive manual alterations.

The fact that other programs aren't working as they should indicates a fair bit of work removing and reinstalling them anyway, especially if the changes you've made have resulted in a situation where they won't properly uninstall (which is quite likely)

A fresh start, and this time around avoid the 'gimmicky' little freebies like the ones which have caused you problems, is the best course of action. Sure, you might be able to 'fix' your current bout of problems, but who knows what else is lurking in there, ready to crop up as an annoying issue, after all that 'hand-pruning'!

[kc0arf]

Hello,

I agree with Catweazle to format it and start over. In the corporate world, this would have happened already. Your cards are shaky, and you might spend forever trying to get all the little nit-nacks to work properly.

Good luck.

Christian