autochk error on startup

[Guest]

I got attacked by a trojan and have trouble booting my system. I'm running
Windows XP on a Dell E1505 laptop. My error on startup is "autochk not found.
Skipping Autocheck". After receiving error message, my system reboots to the
same error. I'm caught in an endless loop.

I've verified the autochk.exe file is located in the windows\system32
directory.

Any ideas how to get past this error?

 

[John John]

Some malware make use of the BootExecute registry value to start when
the computer boots. If you remove the malware without removing the
entry from the BootExecute value you may experience the reboot problem
that you are having. You may need to edit the registry to get over that
error, there are several ways of doing this.

Do you know what a Bart's PE disk is? http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ If
you know of this PE disk or if you are comfortable that you can build
such a disk you can add a registry editor plugin to the disk and edit
the registry that way. Another way would be to use another variation of
Bart's PE disk: http://ubcd4win.com/ Yet another way, if you have more
than one partition would be to install a second copy of windows on the
second partition and use it to edit the registry on the original
installation. You can also use the Recovery Console and move the
registry files about, boot the computer, edit the broken hive then use
the RC again to return the edited registry file to the original
location. There are still other, increasingly difficult ways to carry
out the remote registry edit, let me know if you are willing to try one
of these options and I will post more information.

John