G
Guest
My XP Home machine was going through an Avast! preboot virus scan when one of
my teenagers manually restarted the machine without realizing what was
processing. I wasn't home, but now we cannot get the machine to reboot. It
will go through the boot sequence, and even bring me to the screen where I
click on my username (I only have one user account name on this computer that
is not password protected). I click on that, it says loading your personal
settings, and then an error message comes up for explorer.exe that says
WININET.dll is missing and that reinstallation may solve the problem. When I
click OK on that, the screen goes to my standard wallpaper/background, but no
icons of programs, no start button, no task bar, no system tray, etc. All
blank screen except for my background image.
There is one other problem we've been having lately, but it may not be
related to this. One of the teens downloaded something, and now when we
boot, a dialog box will sometimes open asking if we want to load "lock1.exe".
I instructed everyone to always say no until I could back up my files and
check into this further. After googling this, it appears this is a "rootkit"
file, and recommendations seem to be to wipe out the hard drive and do a
clean install.
I mostly want to save some outlook emails, and I have no prior backup. Back
backup hygiene, I know. Hopefully, some of the Christmas Spirit is available
to bail me out of not backing up my HD.
So, I presume I need to reinstall something from my XP CD? Then, backup
selected (nonexecutable emails, word docs, things like that) files since I
don't know where the rootkit has hidden itself. And then nuke the HD and do
a clean install.
Any help on how to get started and feedback on my situation would be greatly
appreciated!
Merry Christmas,
Martin
my teenagers manually restarted the machine without realizing what was
processing. I wasn't home, but now we cannot get the machine to reboot. It
will go through the boot sequence, and even bring me to the screen where I
click on my username (I only have one user account name on this computer that
is not password protected). I click on that, it says loading your personal
settings, and then an error message comes up for explorer.exe that says
WININET.dll is missing and that reinstallation may solve the problem. When I
click OK on that, the screen goes to my standard wallpaper/background, but no
icons of programs, no start button, no task bar, no system tray, etc. All
blank screen except for my background image.
There is one other problem we've been having lately, but it may not be
related to this. One of the teens downloaded something, and now when we
boot, a dialog box will sometimes open asking if we want to load "lock1.exe".
I instructed everyone to always say no until I could back up my files and
check into this further. After googling this, it appears this is a "rootkit"
file, and recommendations seem to be to wipe out the hard drive and do a
clean install.
I mostly want to save some outlook emails, and I have no prior backup. Back
backup hygiene, I know. Hopefully, some of the Christmas Spirit is available
to bail me out of not backing up my HD.
So, I presume I need to reinstall something from my XP CD? Then, backup
selected (nonexecutable emails, word docs, things like that) files since I
don't know where the rootkit has hidden itself. And then nuke the HD and do
a clean install.
Any help on how to get started and feedback on my situation would be greatly
appreciated!
Merry Christmas,
Martin