XP Major problems

[Zinedene]

Hi,

A friend of mine has recently bought a new PC, and got XP on it, and has cable connection for internet.
This guys lives on the internet now, all he does is stay online and download music etc from Kazaa etc.

Lately, I told him to make sure he had his data backed up properly, as this guys has downloaded a MASSIVE collection of songs etc...
Problem is, when he is at work during the day, the rest of his younger brothers etc use the net...and download anything and everything

He phoned me up last night, saying that Kazaa does no open anymore, and a lot of errors are happening in the OS.
He says that he keeps getting 'Missing link...System 32 ' blah blah'

I have never touched XP, so I was wondering if anyone could send some ideas this way..
Apparently, his brother says that he seen a 'pop-up box' warning of a worm or somethingm on the screen. but just double clicked cancel, to reach his location quicker.
He also says that a box appeared with virus found, which stated that 4-5 files were unremovable.

I know this is an akward situation, as I dont even know the full problem, BUT, could anyone please GIVE ME SOME ADVICE as to how to approach the problem.

He also recently downloaded AVG onto his PC. He says that the system has been acting funny since then..
When he does an AVG scan no errors are found...
nearly all .exe files aint working anymore...

Any help appreciated,

Zinedene

[doctorgonzo]

It is likely that he has been infected with something. He should start by doing an on-line virus scan:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

[Zinedene]

HI,

Thanks for the response..
Im going to his house now, so we'll give it a try....

I'll Let you know how it goes, nice 1 4 tha advice...

Zinedene

[reboot]

If you can actually get it to run, make sure a full virus scan is done with the latest update, THEN use system restore to put it back to where it was before all this, only a couple of days may do it.
Once that's done, if things don't work, pop in the CD, change boot order in BIOS to CD, start the XP install. On the first screen, click "Install XP", then just a bit later, it will ask if you want to "Repair an installation", select that, and let it run.
That will repair/replace any files that are missing/corrupted by the virus.

[Zinedene]

HI,

doctorgonzo, I just did the viruscan and it didnt find no virus or infected files...

reboot, unfortunately he didnt get the actual XP disk, so their is no cd disk to load from....


I have also tried system restore to a previous location/date, but it does not allow it, responding with a

Windows cannot find c:\Windows\SYSTEM32\Restore\rstrui.exe


Help please, anyone with any ideas,

Thanks ,
Zinedene

[doctorgonzo]

Did you check to see if restrui.exe really isn't there, or in another place on the HD?

If this is a store-bought PC, does he have a restore CD of some kind?

Did you run the scan in safe mode and shut down all unnecessary processes?

[reboot]

Check to see if the files needed are in c:\windows\options\cabs.

[Zinedene]

Hi, im back again,


doctorgonzo , just did a virus scan and did not find anything.....

reboot, unfortunately he did not get an XP disk with the PC, so their is no OS on disk... therefore we cant attempt repair installation right now...

sorry, to keep asking, but anymore ideas????

Oh yeah, I tried the system restore facility...unfortunately, it dont work...
We have created a restore point in the past, but it doesnt want to work...
following error appears:

Windows cannot find 'C:\Windows\system32\restore\ rstrui.exe

Any ideas ????

Nice 1

[Zinedene]

oops , double print!!

[Zinedene]

ok,

quick update, just did a search for restrui.exe , and could find nothing....

[Psychodic_Greak]

It seems as if the boys also delete everything :-(

[reboot]

Check to see if there's anything in c:\windows\options\cabs. If there's a big list of things, or even a folder titled I386, then you may be able to reinstall XP over top of itself.

[Brown Hornet]

i need to restore my computer also went to start access sys tool sys restore nothing.dug a bit deeper on microsoft site said i need to log on as admin .i own the damn thing i thought i was the admin.im the only one who uses the computer.

help

brownhornet

[grasshopperbe]

brownhornet, you need to give your system 's specs (certainly the os)
who built the pc and installed the os onto it? was it preinstalled by a store, or by someone else then it may be possible that they made the admin account.
as far as i know, win2000 and winxp
have to have an administrator account and a user account. the admin account is where you install remove programs, set program access, and so on, even time and date setting can be blocked to admin only.
its safer to normally take the user account
and only go to admin account if its necessary.
What happened exactly when you clicked system restore, totally nothing? or did you get any sort of message?