McAfee removed files it probably should not have

[Emansor]

Hello,

Oh boy, it started when I downloaded the 30 day free trial of McAfee, I ran a virus scan and it found five files. Two were labeled as some type of Trojan and the other three were potentially unwanted programs.

My fault for not checking to see if the files were in fact dangerous, I removed them all. Two of the potentially unwanted programs were in my system32 folder; the other was in the Americas Army folder. I saw I had two Trojans and kind of panicked.

Well, when I restarted my computer my internet would not work. Every time I opened up Firefox or IE some error came up, I'm not sure what it said. I tried to do a system restore and it still did not work. Being the idiot I am I decided to screw around, and did multiple system restores, multiple "Undo last restore" and some how my internet eventually worked. But I lost all my favorites, my quick bar was gone (on the right of the start menu) and the hotlinks under the navbar on firefox was gone. Also my browser would shake real roughly; sometimes a refresh would stop it.

I put my windows XP cd in, and chose the upgrade option, thinking it would restore any lost files. After it finished it did stop the shaking in my browsers and I had my quickbar back. Everything seemed fine, until I tried to do a system restore again to try to get my bookmarks back and fix any new problems my computer might have (which I feel there are still some problems). I get this error:



So, I guess I'm asking how I could fix this problem without having to format. Would reinstalling windows fix anything? Sorry if anything is unclear.

[juppy]

Check this out.
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=832323

[Statica]

Check out: http://knowledgemap.nai.com/KanisaSu...language=en_US
This was probably caused by a mistake on McAfee's part that found false positives on perfectly good files.
Word of advice: get rid of McAfee! Go to AVG.

[Emansor]

Thanks guys, the link juppy gave seemed worked but unfortunately Statica's link had no use to me, as the files were deleted. I think all my system restores screwed that option up too.

After finishing following the Microsoft link I decided to run in safe mode and do a new virus scan. It found three things:

C:\Programfiles\Broadjump\Client foundation\CFD.exe
C:\Windows\system32\msiaih.dll
C:\Windows\system32\reg6523.exe

I looked them up and several sites said the last two were dangerous files, but I have a feeling those were the files I removed that started this whole schpeel.

[juppy]

From what I can find, you're right. Most everything I ran across said those last two were adware. Should be able to remove them with something like AdAware or Spybot Search & Destroy. The first one seems to be more of a file put out by some broadband ISPs to help synchronize files and settings between your computer and their servers. Doesn't look like it will hurt much. I'd question the last two though. If they ARE adware, as all the info says, then it shouldn't hurt anything to scan for them and delete them. Up to you though.

[Emansor]

Thanks for the help, I supposed I'll try to remove them one at a time, just in case.

Also, one last question. When I hit alt+ctrl+del I now get a Windows Security window that has options to lock computer, log off, shut down, task manager, etc. How can I change it to just open up task manager?

I foud this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281980/en-us but I don't want the welcome screen. Is it possible?

[juppy]

Everything I could find said the same thing your link did......that you have to enable the welcome screen in user accounts to make ctrl-alt-del bring up Task Manager instead of the security box. I don't know of any other way to do it. Any real reason why you don't want the welcome screen coming up? If you're just wanting a quick key combo to bring up task manager, you can always do ctrl-shift-esc.

[Emansor]

Hmm, before this McAfee ordeal alt+ctrl+del used to just bring the task manager up, I guess that was actually some bug then. I had no idea about ctrl-shift-esc.

About the welcome screen, assuming I am thinking about the right thing, is where it asks you to log on and or type in a password? It just bothered me as there is really only one account for my computer and it was just another step to turn my computer on. It’s just a small peeve.

Thanks for all the help.

[juppy]

Yeah, you're thinking about the right welcome screen, but there are workarounds where you don't have to login each time; it'll just have the blue screen that says "welcome" and then go straight to the desktop. This is assuming you are the only user of this computer (if you have other people using it and they want their own settings, then you still need the login screen). Since you said there's really only one account though, there shouldn't be a problem with it, because that's how mine is set up. I've got myself as the computer administrator and I've got the Guest account turned off.....no other accounts on here. If this is how yours is set up, when you use the "enable welcome screen" option, it should automatically set it to where there isn't a password required. If it doesn't and you still have to logon, there are two ways around it.
One, you can select Run from the Start menu, type control userpasswords2, and click OK. Turn off the Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer option, and click OK.
Or two, if you have the MS Windows Powertoys program called TweakUI, there is a branch in there called Logon, and if you expand that you'll find one named Autologon. You then click the option to logon automatically at startup and click OK.