Microsoft Support Scam

[barrowhill]

Friend brought round his desktop after being caught out by the Microsoft
Support Scam. He felt such an idiot but fortunately no money lost. However
they had access to PC and system file corrupt. To cut long story short, XP
Pro has been reinstalled so up and running. One very noticeable issue. The
Start menu, apart from pinned programs is blank. Any recently opened
programs are not listed (list set to 10). Done some searching on net and
checked user policy in registry as some suggest. Everything in order. Can
any one suggest other solutions for me to look at and try ?

 

[Paul]

Friend brought round his desktop after being caught out by the Microsoft
Support Scam. He felt such an idiot but fortunately no money lost.
However they had access to PC and system file corrupt. To cut long
story short, XP Pro has been reinstalled so up and running. One very
noticeable issue. The Start menu, apart from pinned programs is blank.
Any recently opened programs are not listed (list set to 10). Done some
searching on net and checked user policy in registry as some suggest.
Everything in order. Can any one suggest other solutions for me to look
at and try ?

Are other files "hidden" ? There is a claim about Start menu items here.

Read the discussion here, and see if you have similar symptoms. Don't use
the suggested tool, unless the symptoms match exactly.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html

Paul

 

[barrowhill]

Paul,

Many thanks for prompt response. Interesting but symptoms don't match
exactly. Only issue is that no recently opened/used programs appear on
Start Menu. Can 'pin' programs no bother but recently used section remains
blank.

 

[Ken Springer]

Friend brought round his desktop after being caught out by the Microsoft
Support Scam. He felt such an idiot but fortunately no money lost.
However they had access to PC and system file corrupt. To cut long story
short, XP Pro has been reinstalled so up and running. One very
noticeable issue. The Start menu, apart from pinned programs is blank.
Any recently opened programs are not listed (list set to 10). Done some
searching on net and checked user policy in registry as some suggest.
Everything in order. Can any one suggest other solutions for me to look
at and try ?

Did you do a clean install, or are you just trying to remove the
problems by fixing/doing a repair of an existing installation?

You might find this interesting from MS technet:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc700813.aspx

In particular, read the last bullet, which I'm quoting:

"The only way to clean a compromised system is to flatten and rebuild.
That’s right. If you have a system that has been completely compromised,
the only thing you can do is to flatten the system (reformat the system
disk) and rebuild it from scratch (reinstall Windows and your
applications). Alternatively, you could of course work on your resume
instead, but I don’t want to see you doing that."

--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 5.0
Thunderbird 5.0
LibreOffice 3.3.3

 

[Paul in Houston TX]

Friend brought round his desktop after being caught out by the Microsoft
Support Scam. He felt such an idiot but fortunately no money lost.
However they had access to PC and system file corrupt. To cut long
story short, XP Pro has been reinstalled so up and running. One very
noticeable issue. The Start menu, apart from pinned programs is blank.
Any recently opened programs are not listed (list set to 10). Done some
searching on net and checked user policy in registry as some suggest.
Everything in order. Can any one suggest other solutions for me to look
at and try ?

I used TweakUI to stop all programs from showing up in recently
used list.
It automatically inserted "NoStartPage" into the registry for
all my programs (regedit / applications).
Perhaps you can use that to turn yours on.

 

[Tester]

Perhaps the number of programs in start menu has changed to ZERO. I
suggest look at this picture and see if your settings looks similar:

<http://tinyurl.com/3v84yaa>
<http://content.screencast.com/users...45-47e4-860e-e1fde4b1adee/2011-08-30_0051.png>

Look at the red arrow that points to 6. Change the number to whatever
you want. If you have the number then try to change it up or down to
see if it makes a difference.

hth

 

[barrowhill]

Paul,

Thanks for reply though I've left it rather late in saying so. Problem now
resolved