New. Here for Advice.

Hello, I've browsed MajorGeeks before, and have found lots of sage advice, but I never registered until now. Thank you all for this great resource!

I am here for advice, and maybe someone can point me where to post this.

I often help my relatives with basic computer trouble. This time I'm completely stumped. The computer boots normally, but won't open most programs. Notepad, and some windows utilities do open and run. Internet browsers, Microsoft office, and most other add on programs won't even open.

Details: Windows 7, Dell Inspiron

What I've tried:
System restore says there are no restore points (although I thought I turned that on a while back.)
Safe mode still won't let me run programs or access the internet.
I ran a Bitdefender boot disk and ran a scan. It came back clean except for 1 I/O error.
Ran disk check, and I think it was clean, but I'm not sure what everything meant.
I created a Tweaking.com disk, but it wouldn't run the program.
I ran a command (forget exactly what) that I found on a thread here to associate lnk files, didn't help.

Of course, I searched the internet, including this forum, but I'm having trouble trying other possible solutions, because I can't run programs.

Where should I post this for help? Thanks!

Riversplitter

 

You may have had some malware on your system that corrupted or deleted the registry keys/values for shortcuts (.LNK files), although I would expect that you would be unable to run all linked executables, including native Windows 7 apps like Notepad. How did you get Notepad to run? Did you double click the notepad.exe file or a shortcut?

In any case, this simple fix is a good place to start and it can't hurt; at most it will do nothing, at best it will fix your problem. I found the fix on this site. Download the attached FixLinks.reg.txt file and rename it to "FixLinks.reg". Then right click on the file and choose "Merge". This will restore all of your LNK related registry keys/values to default. You may need to reboot after merging the reg file. Let us know how it goes.

 

Thanks rustysavage. I tried, but it wouldn't merge. It said that it wasn't a registry file. (Yes, I did change the file extension first.) I'm trying a Dell DataSafe Restore. Hopefully that will help.

I'll let you know what happens.

 

I used the Dell DataSafe restore and it solved the problem. Thanks.

 

Glad to hear it. Given that you couldn't run executable and couldn't merge registry files, both suddently and simultaneously, I'd say it's pretty likely that you got hit with malware. Malware often trashes important areas of the Windows registry. Specifically, the parts of the registry that tell Windows what to do when the user calls on specific file types (like .exe files or .reg files).

So.... is there an antivirus app installed on your relatives computer? You might urge them to get one in order to make it less likely that the computer gets reinfected. Take a look at this page which has a decent number of very good FREE antivirus/malware apps:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/sortname/all_in_one_anti_virus_suites.html

 

I installed Bitdefender. Do you think I need to put anything else on there?

Is there a way to protect people even if they unknowingly click on links or download things that are infected?

 

If BitDefender is doing real-time protection, it will flag a file it finds suspicious of infection and quarantine it. But links, they will have to avoid unless they're sure the link is safe. BitDefender can have false positives just like any other AV so, they'll have to take note when it flags an item and take appropriate action like restore or allow.

Because of possible conflicts, it's unwise to have more than one real-time protection AV running at the same time. If additional protection is deemed necessary, they could use an on-demand scanner like MalwareBytes.

 

BitDefender is a very good antivirus scanner (I use it myself) but like most antivirus apps, it concentrates on true viruses and not so much on other types of malware like adware, trojans, PUPs, and worms. For that you should get a program that puts emphasis on these types of threats. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (MBAM) is a very good scanner. In the freeware version it doesn't do real-time (memory resident) scanning so you'd just manually launch it or set up Windows Scheduler to do that on a set schedule.

To help beef up security while browsing the web, you might want to install Spyware Blaster, which "immunizes" your system from picking up a lot of stuff that might get missed by your antivirus scanner.

E-mail threats are a bit tricky and most scanners just don't monitor the user as they read their mail and mash on links. Probably the most effective practice is simply to NOT click on e-mail links found in messages that the user did not request. Better yet to just delete those messages without opening them.