Windos XP Login Screen and problems.

[JonPC]

My friend uses windows XP. He told me over the phone that he downloading some file which he thought was a game. File was called kkreger(I don't know what file extension). He says after that everything on his PC went downhill after that download(Could find nothing about kkreger on goole). Stuff from the Windows XP log on screen turned to a windows 98 screen, also his AOL is not working. When he accesses his start menu he tells me it takes forever to load up.

He has about 40GB of free space out of 80GB, hes runs spybot and defrags often so hes up to date on that. However he didn't have any antivirus software until everything started going downhill. He did go and buy norton and it only found 1 virus that was spyware related that was junk.

I will be going to his house hopefully tomorrow or tonight if I have time. For one I have no idea why his windows XP display screen now says windows 98. Also he cannot connect to any website. He also gets some other errors I don't know about until I actually go and see them.

[Statica]

Ask your friend to chalk it up to "Lessons learnt by Experience". I don't mean to be harsh, but in this day of trojans and virii; I cannot believe that there are people out there that will willingly install files that they think are games - without running an antivirus software. Look at it this way, when he downloaded the file, he downloaded a probable newish virus. Meanwhile a store bought antivirus CD (and in most cases even downloaded antivirus programs), are packaged installation files that are at least a good few weeks (and that is me being generous consider it at least a few months old) old in pattern files. He seriously doesnt expect Symantec to ship out a new CD in a new box everytime a new virus is discovered and they've got new pattern and scan engine updates. In a typical situation, a person installs an antivirus and then goes to update it over the net, but your friend seems to be unable to connect to his ISP (AOL).

A possible solution would be for you to download something like the trial version of PC-Cillin (http://www.trendmicro.com/en/product...uate/trial.htm)
Also download the latest pattern file: http://www.trendmicro.com/download/pattern.asp (its 2.170.00 as of today);
Burn these files on CD and take it to your friend's computer.
Install PC-Cillin's trial, then unzip the pattern file (it's a zip file) and drop the contents into the PC-Cillin installation directory.
Reboot; now scan the system completely.