Almost there.....

Greeting Software Forum Surfers

Hopefully some of you may chime in to help.

A while back I contracted a virus AND a rootkit of some sort. Went through all of the virus cleaning procedures in the appropriate forum. Link here: Linky Take note, it is officially the thread with the most replies in the forum. Not sure if that is good or bad... haha.
Anyhow, I have pretty much resolved myself to needing to wipe the disc and start fresh. Or buy a Mac. Not sure yet. Been thinking about switching from Vista 64 to 7 64. But I am undecided on that as well.

So, today I started surfing around looking for other methods that may help me out without spending and a lot or more time. On the malwarebytes forum I discovered an anti viral program called roguekiller. Ran it and it found 3 registry items that looked suspicious. So according to the minimal instructions, I killed them. Good idea and bad. Best of all the mysterious warning box stating you are about to view a secure internet connection disappeared as well.

After this programs were freezing (somewhat expected), I surfed around MG and found tweaking.coms resetregistrypermissions. Maybe that would patch up the registry, maybe not. Gave it a whirl and presto, computer boots like it was brand new. In fact it runs really well in safe mode too. Better than ever. But in std mode, it boots like fire but programs freeze. I am sure there is a registry error in there somewhere that effects the 64 bit programming, and not the 32 bit? But I can't seem to find much info on 64 bit systems. In safe mode the freezing programs work fine.

Of note, upon running tweaking's registry program, google talk's plug in stopped working. And the computer would not boot well. So I navigated to control panel programs and uninstalled them before the start programs could get to them to process. Now the CPU boots awesome. Just need to fix the program freeze ups.

Any suggestions before I drive a wooden stake into the heart of MS?

On another note. MBRcheck tells me the rootkit is still there. So even if I can figure out the program freezing, may go find a stake anyways. Or an 8lb sledgehammer and a credit card for an over priced piece of fruit.

Any suggestions? Looking to get the freezing solved, then will step back and consider options.

I think I am almost there with getting this computer workable again, and the rootkit may be a false pos. Or so I am told.

 

If it is only a registry problem perhaps a rescue CD can help.

 

Thanks Tracktor. Worked fairly well. Still fightin.