Expert: Brian Benosky - 2/25/2008

Question
Hello
I use windows XP and I have the full version for both McAfee and Windows Defender. For a couple of days now a lotof adds have been poping up everytime I use the internet, also I get a frequent message saying C/Windows/explorer.exe is corrupt. When I press ok the explorer.exe closes and opens again. When I scan my computer with McAfee if always finds and deletes some cookies, and when I scan with Windows defender it finds one major/harmful problem and I remove it from there. I have also tried re-instlling XP sp2 and sp3 from the microsoft website. Can you tell how I can solve this problem, or a goo dsoftware I can use
Thanks

Answer
Hello Raheel

A corrupt explorer.exe can be caused by a virus.  To check, please download TrendMicro HijackThis! from the following link:
http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/threat_analytics/HJTInstall.exe
* Save HJTInstall.exe to your desktop.
* Doubleclick on the HJTInstall.exe icon on your desktop.
* By default it will install to C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\HijackThis.
* Click on Install.
* It will create a HijackThis icon on the desktop.
* Once installed, it will launch Hijackthis.
* Click on the Do a system scan and save a logfile button. It will scan and the log should open in notepad.
* Click on "Edit > Select All" then click on "Edit > Copy" and Paste the entire contents of the log (no attachments) into a follow up here.

After you do that, launch task manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL), run cmd and then c:\windows\system32\restore\rstrui.exe
from the command prompt (edit the command if you didn't install windows in c:\windows).
See if system restore can rescue explorer for you.
If that doesn't work, run appwiz.cpl from the command prompt. This will start up the add/remove programs panel. Uninstall sp3 & sp2 and your old explorer.exe should work again.

Next, reinstall sp2 & sp3. Then make a fresh copy of explorer.exe and store as backup.

Brian