PC restarts endlessly after running ComboFix

Hello,

Thank you for your time helping me!! I desperately in need of your help, here. :cry

I was helping my friend rid of malwares and viruses from his computer remotely accessing to his computer using LogMeIn screen sharing.

I followed the steps mentioned in the url http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=139313 for cleaning up his Windows XP machine, and all went fine, until I was at ComboFix. After ComboFix successfully backed-up registry and installed Windows Recovery Console, it disconnected network, as expected. My friend told me over the phone that it is going through different stages and it was about at Step 22. I told him on the phone that at the end of all this, he will see a notepad open with the ComboFix log... and I went ahead to have a lunch.

Then, I got a call from this friend saying that the computer restarted automatically! He said he was away from the computer at the time this happened and couldn't tell me the behaviors right before the restart. Told him to login with his credential, which is what was used at the time I ran ComboFix. As soon as he hit ENTER after providing his password, computer restarted... and, ever since then, his computer has gone into an endless loop of trying to restart the computer. And, every time, it never even reach to the login screen.

Looks like Windows is crashing, because at the time of reboot, it shows the Windows XP restart options prompting that the Windows did not close properly, letting you choose to run in Safe Mode or not.

The sad thing is, i had disabled System Restore the first thing when I started working on his computer. So, ComboFix must not have created any system restore point, that i can revert back to.

Can you please tell me what ComboFix must have done that is causing this? And, how can I get out of it, so that I can at least uninstall ComboFix? I'm not able to even access the Desktop folder using Recovery Console where the ComboFix is placed.

Look forward to hearing from you soon.

thanks!
-Yasutaka

 

Thanks for your response, Tim.

I did all that, and even restored registries from what ComboFix had created, which was stored under %systemroot%\windows. Still the result was the same.

So, I had to call the guy to bring his computer over to my home and did a fresh installation for him.

I know you're very busy and we're already glad for the help you're providing to so many, but, if you allow me to say some selfish things, it would be nice to have a detailed documentation and guide on what ComboFix does under the hood, what can go wrong and how to recover from each "problem situation".

Anyways, appreciate your help, and please do keep up your good work!

-Yasutaka