Vista & Windows Explorer

Friend of mine has a new laptop running Vista, within a day of getting ADSL he picks up a trojan and calls me for some help. I have identified what it is and I know how to fix it, however the problem is that the machine keeps throwing up a message that "Windows Explorer has found an error and needs to close" It then closes any programs that are open and reverts back to the desktop and starts all over again.


Anybody got any ideas on how to stop this or am I going to have to re-install?

TIA

 

Have you tried it in safe mode?

Also note that you don't strictly NEED explorer.exe running to do quite a bit. You can still launch apps via task manager. Hitting CTRL+SHIFT+ESC will bring it up, even without explorer running. This should be enough to get you to regedit, or the command prompt, etc.

 

Thanks for the reply Mada. Yes I have tried it in safe mode and it does the same thing. Good idea about stopping explorer.exe, stopping it running will be fun as this warning message just goes in a complete loop all the time. I'll try that later on when I finish work.

 

I ended up having to do a re-install which was fairly painless as there was a re-install partition on the HDD. The reason I had to re-install was that the app I downloaded to zap the trojan was not Vista compatible, so be wary guys and gals, it's not just the drivers and the big boys who are behind the times.

I for one won't be bothered with Vista for a long time. (maybe after SP1)