Help Required

[Steve Shipping]

I am running XP Professional and have a few problems. Recently the scanner
and camera wizard has stopped appearing when I plug in my digital camera
(USB) all I get is an explorer window showing the contents of the camera as
a removable drive, secondly when I type "regedit" into the run box from the
start menu al I get is a command prompt window with the following as the
header "C:\WINDOWS\System32\regedit.com"

Has anyone got any ideas?

 

[Nepatsfan]

Instead of entering regedit, type in regedit.exe and see what
happens. You might also check to see if other Windows utilities
such as Task Manager, msconfig and Control Panel applets are
working properly.

Something tells me that the two problems you've mentioned are
just symptoms of a possible much larger problem. Here's what I
think is happening:
Regedit.com is not a valid Windows file. The valid Registry
Editor program is regedit.exe. It's located in your Windows
folder, C:\Windows\regedit.exe.
The command prompt looks for files in this order, .com then .exe
then .bat. It found regedit.com and tried to run that command. It
never looked for regedit.exe.

How that file got on your computer is another matter. A
virus/worm/trojan or some other form of malware may have infected
your machine. Run a scan with an up-to-date antivirus program.
You should also try running one of the free online scanners. Here
are a few that might be helpful:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/

You also might want to consider downloading, updating and running
the following antispyware applications:

Spybot S & D
http://www.spychecker.com/program/spybot.html

AdAware
http://www.spychecker.com/program/adaware.html

 

[Steve Shipping]

Instead of entering regedit, type in regedit.exe and see what
happens. You might also check to see if other Windows utilities
such as Task Manager, msconfig and Control Panel applets are
working properly.

Something tells me that the two problems you've mentioned are
just symptoms of a possible much larger problem. Here's what I
think is happening:
Regedit.com is not a valid Windows file. The valid Registry
Editor program is regedit.exe. It's located in your Windows
folder, C:\Windows\regedit.exe.
The command prompt looks for files in this order, .com then .exe
then .bat. It found regedit.com and tried to run that command. It
never looked for regedit.exe.

How that file got on your computer is another matter. A
virus/worm/trojan or some other form of malware may have infected
your machine. Run a scan with an up-to-date antivirus program.
You should also try running one of the free online scanners. Here
are a few that might be helpful:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/

You also might want to consider downloading, updating and running
the following antispyware applications:

Spybot S & D
http://www.spychecker.com/program/spybot.html

AdAware
http://www.spychecker.com/program/adaware.html

Hi,
Thanks for the info,
regedit.exe worked ok, I do have Adaware &
Spybot S&D installed as well as McAfee internet security Suite all of which
are up to data and run regularly, I will try the online checkers you
suggest.
Regards
Steve

 

[Nepatsfan]

Hi,
Thanks for the info,
regedit.exe worked ok, I do have
Adaware &
Spybot S&D installed as well as McAfee internet security Suite
all of which
are up to data and run regularly, I will try the online
checkers you
suggest.
Regards
Steve

It's always possible that a past scan with one of those programs
already removed most of the infection but left behind the
regedit.com file. If after running all your scans you do not find
any other problems try renaming regedit.com something like
regedit.old. After a week or so you can go back and delete that
file.

As for your digital camera problem, my knowledge on that subject
is limited. I've installed a few by using the software that was
provided by the manufacturer. Once the installation was complete
and the camera was connected to the computer, the application
that was provided on the installation CD was launched. I don't
recall ever seeing an explorer window being opened. You might
want to check to see if autoplay has been disabled for this
device.

That said, you might want to post your question to one of the
following newsgroups:

microsoft.public.windowsxp.photos
microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware

Good luck

Nepatsfan

 

[Nepatsfan]

Hi,

Thanks for the info,
regedit.exe worked ok, I do have
Adaware &
Spybot S&D installed as well as McAfee internet security Suite
all of which
are up to data and run regularly, I will try the online
checkers you
suggest.
Regards
Steve

Did some more research on your camera problem and came across
this:

http://forum.gladiator-antivirus.com/index.php?showtopic=15090

Don't know if it will help but one of the responses suggested
that this behavior was caused by the most recent version of Real
Player. It was such an obscure solution that I thought it was
worth passing on.

Nepatsfan