Adware Infected and Stuck

Heya everyone:

My personal system has recently developed an adware infection. I'm running Vista 64-bit Home Premium.

Normally, I would try several tools to rid myself of the problem- the only thing is, I can't access any system functions at all. Logging into windows results in about twenty little popups that all say a slight variation of "Failed to save all the components for file \\system32\\(filename here). The file is corrupted or unreadable. This error may be caused by a PC hardware problem".

Looking this up on the interwebz, I found that it was adware, and the prescribed fix was to run several programs, all of which I'd run before and had on a flash drive. The issue is that the adware not only hid my files, it hid basic windows functions also, like My Computer or Control Panel, and I have no idea how to access the files I need to remove this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

When you are on your desktop (with all those \\system32\\ fake alert messages))

Now press and hold the Windows key on your keyboard, then press the letter r on your keyboard.
This opens the run dialog box
Type in explorer in the text-field
press ENTER

Explorer opens
Tools > Folder Options > View (tab) > Show Hidden files and folders (put a bullet here) > Hide extensions for known file types (uncheck this one) > Hide protected operating system files (uncheck this)

You should be able to see your hard drive contents now.

This type of infection places the hidden attribute (your files are still here, just marked hidden ) on the entire OS drive.

From here you should download and run Unhide by Grinler

Please download Unhide by Grinler to your desktop.
Double-click unhide.exe to run it (Vista and Win7 right-click and select Run as administrator)

Then proceed with the READ and RUN ME first thread

 

Thanks for the reply. I got in another way, but successfully removed the infection.

 

Glad to hear it. No problem. Surf safely!