Vista Defender Malware Infection

Blade81,
Somewhat inconsistent. Clicking Word and Excel icons results in an error saying that the executables can't be found. Other program icons, like Spybot, pop up the dialog box. Word documents bring up Word, text files bring up Notepad, but wmv video files ask for directions. Quicktime files launch Quicktime. Folders open.

John
 
Also, within the Default User account, the applications that aren't working from the desktop can't be launched from the Start menu either. Everything seems to work fine in the Admin account, but I didn't have any problems there from the start. The problems (or at least the symptoms) seem to have been confined to the User account.
 
Hi John,

Would it be possible to create a new user account to replace the problematic one?
 
Blade,
Yes, that could be done. It's probably the quickest and cleanest fix. I guess the main challenge will be ensuring that the new account has access to all the content owned by the old account.

John
 
Hi,

You should be able to do that in admin account by taking ownership of old account's contents. Instructions for this here.
 
Blade,
Thanks for the suggestion. I ended up deleting the old account. Vista asked if I wanted to save the content to the admin desktop, which I did. I then created a replacement account and moved the content to it. It worked fine. All seems good now and I have a much cleaner user account. Thanks again for all the help you provided.:)

John
 
You're welcome

Since this issue appears to be resolved ... this Topic has been closed. Glad I could help. :)

Note:If it has been four days or more since your last post, and the helper assisting you posted a response to that post to which you did not reply, your topic will not be reopened. At that point, if you still require help, please start a new topic and include a fresh HijackThis log and a link to your previous thread.

If it has been less than four days since your last response and you need the thread re-opened, please send me or MOD a private message (pm). A valid, working link to the closed topic is required.
 
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