URGENT : Running Spybot - Search and Destroy Gives problems.

[Lakshmi Jagarlapudi]

Hi Everyone,

As per some people recommendations, inorder to clean my pc against virus, I
have downloaded and ran
"Spybot - Search and Destroy" program. After it finished its work , it said
it has cleaned so and so.
However to my utter surprise, now I am not able to use my PC at all.
Whenever I try to any program say ,notepad,
I get the message "This file does not have a program associated with it for
performing this action. Create an association in the
Folder Options Control Panel".

This is so shocking that I tried to fix the virus issue and I am not even
able to start anything or even work on my computer.

Let me tell you,firstly
the spyboy has created a system restore point before it started its
process.
Then gave me a list of all the problems that my PC had.
And then when I pressed the fix button it has "so-called" fixed. However
that fix ,I think,
has screwed some very basic information in the registry. Because of which
even
basic applications(in fact nothing) are not running.

I was so happy that, it has removed so many unnecessary programs and files,
however it has also
tampered with some very basic required files or registry. So finally I have
restored my PC to a desired restore point.

So everyone out there, do you have any further suggestions at this stage.

Anyway, watchout before you use any kind of such programs.

Waiting for all your updates.
Thanks,

 

[DaddyBob]

First, Spybot has nothing to do with viruses. It removes adware and spyware,
not viruses. And, I use it all the time on many computers and it has never
destroyed anything. Possibly if you didn't even know what it was supposed to
do, or how it works, you should not have used it. Still, I seriously doubt
that running spybot had the effect you describe. Besides, anything it does
can easily be reversed.

It and ad-aware are excellent programs, and they DO work.

Bob
-------------------------------
Hi Everyone,

As per some people recommendations, inorder to clean my pc against virus, I
have downloaded and ran
"Spybot - Search and Destroy" program. After it finished its work , it said
it has cleaned so and so.
However to my utter surprise, now I am not able to use my PC at all.
Whenever I try to any program say ,notepad,
I get the message "This file does not have a program associated with it for
performing this action. Create an association in the
Folder Options Control Panel".

This is so shocking that I tried to fix the virus issue and I am not even
able to start anything or even work on my computer.

Let me tell you,firstly
the spyboy has created a system restore point before it started its
process.
Then gave me a list of all the problems that my PC had.
And then when I pressed the fix button it has "so-called" fixed. However
that fix ,I think,
has screwed some very basic information in the registry. Because of which
even
basic applications(in fact nothing) are not running.

I was so happy that, it has removed so many unnecessary programs and files,
however it has also
tampered with some very basic required files or registry. So finally I have
restored my PC to a desired restore point.

So everyone out there, do you have any further suggestions at this stage.

Anyway, watchout before you use any kind of such programs.

Waiting for all your updates.
Thanks,

 

[David Efflandt]

Hi Everyone,

As per some people recommendations, inorder to clean my pc against virus, I
have downloaded and ran
"Spybot - Search and Destroy" program. After it finished its work , it said
it has cleaned so and so.
However to my utter surprise, now I am not able to use my PC at all.
Whenever I try to any program say ,notepad,
I get the message "This file does not have a program associated with it for
performing this action. Create an association in the
Folder Options Control Panel".

Someone at work had a similar problem. When he double-clicked on a .TXT
file, it said it could not find Notepad. So he tried to open Wordpad from
the Start menu and was told that Windows could not find Wordpad. He did
not remember running anything specific prior to that happening (no virus
or ad removal tools).

Looking at the shortcuts in the Start menu, the paths apparently start
with %SYSTEM%, so apparently something had redefined or removed the SYSTEM
variable from the environment. Notepad.exe and Wordpad.exe were still in
his WINNT directory (XP Pro). I told him to try rebooting and logging
into his local machine instead of domain, but it was end of day before
July 4th weekend, so I suppose we will see what happens when he boots
tomorrow.