Help Repairing Win XP Home

[Alan]

Running a Compaq PC with Win XP Home SP1.

My brother-in-laws computer became infested with a variety of
Trojans, malware, etc. He garnered lots of information and using
various antivirus, spyware, adware, malware removal tools cleaned
up the PC. All scans now come up clean. The antivirus scans he
is performing are from the tools available from software
providers online. E.g. Trend Micro's Housecall.

All of his applications are working including his internet
connection. Win XP appears to be working fine until .....

He can't run windows update. He can't activate ICF (internet
connection firewall). A peek at Admin. Services shows that ICF
is completely missing. AUtomatic Updates is listed but has no
description or status or properties.

When attempting to install the Kerio firewall and the AVG
antivirus program, the installers won't run. I.e., when you
double-click to execute the exe file, they don't run. When
attempting to install Avast antivirus, it launches and quickly
disappears as if it never launched.

It seems that certain dll files are no longer installed.

As this is a Compaq, it has an OEM version of the base Win XP OS
with a recovery disk. As I said earlier, that OS has been
upgraded to SP1 plus various hotfixes.

We do have the Microsoft Win XP SP2 disk but I am reluctant to
use it to upgrade as I fear disaster may be lurking given the
current state of the OS.

I assume a reinstall of SP1 might solve the problem but we don't
know how we could do that without an SP1 disk. His system does
have a boot menu with the recovery console. However, I don't see
how that could help relative to missing dll files.

We are looking for some very good ideas to fix this problem with
minimal risk to his PC. Are there any s/w apps available that can
analyze the problem and tell us what may be missing? Is there a
way to reinstall SP1? (It's my understanding that if you run the
setup program and execute it as an upgrade, you keep all your
apps, drivers and settings.)

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Sounds like the system is hopelessly corrupt. Use the Compaq
recovery CD, install SP2, then install a good antivirus program.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxp/choose.mspx

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| Running a Compaq PC with Win XP Home SP1.
|
| My brother-in-laws computer became infested with a variety of
| Trojans, malware, etc. He garnered lots of information and using
| various antivirus, spyware, adware, malware removal tools cleaned
| up the PC. All scans now come up clean. The antivirus scans he
| is performing are from the tools available from software
| providers online. E.g. Trend Micro's Housecall.
|
| All of his applications are working including his internet
| connection. Win XP appears to be working fine until .....
|
| He can't run windows update. He can't activate ICF (internet
| connection firewall). A peek at Admin. Services shows that ICF
| is completely missing. AUtomatic Updates is listed but has no
| description or status or properties.
|
| When attempting to install the Kerio firewall and the AVG
| antivirus program, the installers won't run. I.e., when you
| double-click to execute the exe file, they don't run. When
| attempting to install Avast antivirus, it launches and quickly
| disappears as if it never launched.
|
| It seems that certain dll files are no longer installed.
|
| As this is a Compaq, it has an OEM version of the base Win XP OS
| with a recovery disk. As I said earlier, that OS has been
| upgraded to SP1 plus various hotfixes.
|
| We do have the Microsoft Win XP SP2 disk but I am reluctant to
| use it to upgrade as I fear disaster may be lurking given the
| current state of the OS.
|
| I assume a reinstall of SP1 might solve the problem but we don't
| know how we could do that without an SP1 disk. His system does
| have a boot menu with the recovery console. However, I don't see
| how that could help relative to missing dll files.
|
| We are looking for some very good ideas to fix this problem with
| minimal risk to his PC. Are there any s/w apps available that can
| analyze the problem and tell us what may be missing? Is there a
| way to reinstall SP1? (It's my understanding that if you run the
| setup program and execute it as an upgrade, you keep all your
| apps, drivers and settings.)

 

[Bob Harris]

If this were a PC with a retail version of XP, a repair installation would
be worth trying. That leaves your files and programs alone, and refreshes
the XP files that might be corrupt of mssing. A repair installation should
be done with the same CDROM used to install XP on thta PC, otherwise
license/activation problems may result. You could buy a full retail version
of XP (about $200) and use it to do a repair. However, note that a reapir
is not guarranteed to fix your problem(s), since it does not re-create the
registry from scratch. If the problem(s) are not simply missing files, but
in the registry, a repair will not help.

Links about repairing:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341



http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm



http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=23979,00.asp


But, since this is a name-brand PC, first try contacting Compaq support, and
hope that they are willing to suggest something other thanusing the restore
CD, which would erase all files and start over. Especially ask them is a
"repair installation" is possible with their CD, as opposed to a fresh
install, or a disk image restoration.

Other possibilitties include trying the system file checker (i.e., SFC
/SCANNOW). This can check and replace most system files, but it rrequires
that you have a source of such files. That is usually the XP CDROM, but
the files might also be stored on disk in C:\windows\system32\dllcache. You
might be able to use any XP CDROM for the same version (and SP) as a source
of files for SFC. As with a repair, SFC wll not fix any registry problems.

Link about SFC

http://www.updatexp.com/scannow-sfc.html

You could try applying SP-2. That is a large free download or a free CD,
both from Microsoft. However, if the current installation of sufficiently
corrupt, SP-2 may refuse to install, or might actually fail part way through
the install. It could make things worse.

It might be worth brwosing the following sites for ideas:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm
http://www.theeldergeek.com/
http://www.dougknox.com/

A clean install (or using Compaq restoration CD) would certainly work, but
you would lose all files. Since that may be where you are headed, start
copying personal files to external media (CED, DVD, USB hard drive, etc),
just in case.

 

[Alan]

If this were a PC with a retail version of XP, a repair installation would
be worth trying. That leaves your files and programs alone, and refreshes
the XP files that might be corrupt of mssing. A repair installation should
be done with the same CDROM used to install XP on thta PC, otherwise
license/activation problems may result. You could buy a full retail version
of XP (about $200) and use it to do a repair. However, note that a reapir
is not guarranteed to fix your problem(s), since it does not re-create the
registry from scratch. If the problem(s) are not simply missing files, but
in the registry, a repair will not help.

Links about repairing:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341



http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm



http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=23979,00.asp


But, since this is a name-brand PC, first try contacting Compaq support, and
hope that they are willing to suggest something other thanusing the restore
CD, which would erase all files and start over. Especially ask them is a
"repair installation" is possible with their CD, as opposed to a fresh
install, or a disk image restoration.

Other possibilitties include trying the system file checker (i.e., SFC
/SCANNOW). This can check and replace most system files, but it rrequires
that you have a source of such files. That is usually the XP CDROM, but
the files might also be stored on disk in C:\windows\system32\dllcache. You
might be able to use any XP CDROM for the same version (and SP) as a source
of files for SFC. As with a repair, SFC wll not fix any registry problems.

Link about SFC

http://www.updatexp.com/scannow-sfc.html

You could try applying SP-2. That is a large free download or a free CD,
both from Microsoft. However, if the current installation of sufficiently
corrupt, SP-2 may refuse to install, or might actually fail part way through
the install. It could make things worse.

It might be worth brwosing the following sites for ideas:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm
http://www.theeldergeek.com/
http://www.dougknox.com/

A clean install (or using Compaq restoration CD) would certainly work, but
you would lose all files. Since that may be where you are headed, start
copying personal files to external media (CED, DVD, USB hard drive, etc),
just in case.

I'm running SP2 on my own machine. On his machine the dllcache
appears to have the files. They are mostly a mix of files dated
2001 and 2002 and a few 2004. I'm guessing that the 2001 files
are the base OS and the 2002 files are the SP1 files that haven't
been upgraded. There are also sp1.cab files in the driver
subfolder and the systemfiles subfolder.
I'm going to try to use a vbs file from one of the sites
referenced to install the ICF and I'm going to try to install
windowsupdate from the installer. I'm also going to check the
error logs to find out what system file(s) may be missing that
prevent certain self-extracting exe files to fail.

I did notice that his repair subfolder had default, SAM, security
and software files. He did not have a system file but had a
system.bak file. I was thinking of using the recovery console to
replace the files in the system32\config folder with the ones in
the repair folder. Can the system.bak file be used to create the
system file?