Unable to run multiple removal tools

Hello,

My computer (also used by roommates) appears to be infected with something that’s keeping me from running any number of anti-virus programs. I use Windows Vista SP2, BTW, on a Gateway machine that’s about 2 ½ to 3 years old.

To the best of my knowledge, here’s what has happened. As I mentioned, I'm not the only user, but everyone else swears not to know anything.

Here goes:

For the past 2-3 weeks, anytime I had multiple windows or tabs opened in IE, there started becoming a delay anytime I’d try to close them. Sometimes it would just be a second or two, and eventually it would get to where I’d tell it to close a tab and IE would hang for 5-7 seconds before it finally closed.

I figured it was just a new Windows/IE update that was buggy and a new update would come along soon enough to fix it. But after putting up with it for a few weeks, it finally got annoying enough that yesterday I tried finding a solution.

First, I ran AdAware, thinking maybe one of the roommates got onto a bad site and got some spyware on the computer. But it came up clean. So I started doing searches to find a solution.

I didn’t find anything specific, but I saw some suggestions to disable browser add-ons and see if that made any difference. That advice was actually for a delay when first opening a tab, not closing them, but I tried anyway.

I don’t have many add-ons, but I attempted some trial and error with those I do have. I use the free version of AVG and it has the “safe search” add-on. I disabled that and the delay problem disappeared.

I’m not sure if the IE delay was a symptom of my infection or if it was unrelated. But even though I fixed the delay problem by disabling the AVG add-on, IE’s performance started going downhill, mostly with frequent crashes. Again, this all happened yesterday (the 8th), basically over the course of one afternoon.

Then, while I was visiting a site I have no reason to think is unsafe, AVG detected something and put it in the virus vault. From there, IE started crashing almost constantly. I even get errors popping up to tell me that IE has stopped working when I don’t have it open.

I figured something had to be wrong, so I ran a scan with AVG and it came back clean. But I began using Firefox to search for solutions to IE constantly crashing and I realized my search results were getting hijacked and re-directed. That’s when I knew I had a problem.

I ended up running a virus scan called F-Secure Easy Clean and it told me I had two infections. I tried to take a screen capture of the report, but it failed for some reason. But I know the infection said “java” in it and possibly “Trojan:Java” with additional things after that.

F-Secure said it cleaned the infections, but none of my problems went away. And upon rebooting my computer, I was now getting an error about MSASCui.exe (which is part of Windows Defender) that says “the application failed to initialize properly”.

After clicking OK on that error, I get an error stating that Windows Defender has stopped working. Then when Windows fully booted up, I realized AVG had basically been disabled – when I double-click the tray icon, it says “there are no active components”.

So Windows Defender and AVG no longer work. I attempted to use the online Microsoft scan, but got an error message. I searched for more anti-virus software and attempted to install Spybot Search and Destroy, but just as the install was almost complete, I got a blue screen and my computer restarted. I tried installing in safe mode and got the same result.​

At that point, I came here and began following the initial removal steps.

Here are my notes on the initial procedures:

- I had the Viewpoint Media Player in my program list. I told it to remove the program and the uninstall program crashed, but it’s no longer included in the list.

- I am unable to install SUPERAntiSpyware. Initially, it would crash as soon as I tried to install it. I renamed the setup file and was able to start the install process, but just like Spybot, it sends my computer to a blue screen and forces a reboot just before the setup completes.

- I am unable to run Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. Like the previous program, I could not install it until I renamed the setup file. This program successfully installed, but when I attempt to run it, it crashes immediately.

- Initially, I could not even download Combofix because my computer is blocking me from accessing the bleepingcomputer.com domain. I had to get it off a separate computer, and when I tried to install it, it also crashes and won’t let me install.

- I cannot run RootRepeal. When starting the program, it brings up a rectangle reading “Initializing, please wait…” and goes no further until I stop the process through Task Manager.

- I can (and did) run MGTools, although it appeared to crash upon reaching a scan involving prosessdll.exe. The error said that the “application has generated an exception that could not be handled”.

But even with that error, MGTools made several logs and I’ve attached them to this message.​

Again, I’m not sure if I’ve been infected with something for a while and somehow worsened it in my attempts to eliminate the IE delay, or if I was fine and made a big mistake by shutting off AVG’s safe search (even though it was only off a few hours). But there’s definitely a major problem going on.

My biggest issues seem to be:

- Multiple anti-virus or virus removal programs will not run
- The Windows Defender error when logging onto Windows
- The issue of my search results being hijacked seems to be fixed, but some domains (bleepingcomputer.com among them) are blocked
- IE is basically unusable as it crashes constantly

All I have are the MGTools logs, I hope they’re enough. I looked through the logs, or tried to, and I did see a section where it appeared to specify some files that might be suspicious. So hopefully there's an easy solution.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your reply. After I initially submitted my post, I was given a tip that since I was able to install Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, I could try to run it by renaming the .exe file to .bat or a similar extension.

I tried that and the program worked. I ran a quick scan and it found a few infections, then had me reboot so it could clean them. As Vista booted back up, the error I was getting about Windows Defender didn't come up and AVG loaded as normal (though it was disabled so the scans could run).

I then ran a full scan with Anti-Malware, which took a considerable amount of time. But it found a few more things that it cleaned up. Then I tried installing SUPERAntiSpyware and it finally installed. I ran that and I believe it found just one thing, which it fixed.

I've since run ComboFix and MGTools to produce some logs. I'm still unable to run RootRepeal... it just hangs at this little window saying "Initializing, please wait…". Perhaps I have something running that's causing a conflict, but I'm not sure what it would be. I removed AdAware and ComboFix alerted me of a conflict with AVG, so I removed that also.

Everything seems to be working normally now, but I'm not sure if I've gotten it completely cleaned out or not. Here's my latest logs from SUPERAntiSpyware, Anti-Malware, ComboFix, and MGTools. Hopefully you can let me know how they look.

Thanks again.

 

Hi Tim,

Here's the log.

 

Thanks, Tim!!