Cant run any of the cleaning tools

Hi, have been given an XP Home laptop from a mate that fires up and at first glance seems fine.

However, the only program I can get to run is IE (have not connected it to the net yet as rather concerned he has something pretty nasty on there).

Word, excel, antivirus, antispyware, cccleaner, combofix etc... will not run or install.

Even in safe mode I can still not access the task manager or add/remove programs or run any cleaning or antispyware programs at all, except again for IE.

Anyone got any clues where or how to start?

Cheers, Dave.

 

Ok, have found a link to a reg fix that was able to correct the not running .exe files, am slowly progressing, but have had to change the name of superantispyware to get it to install, then changed the name of the executeable to get it to run!
The antivirus program that was on the PC was Nortons 2003, last updated in November 2002 and expired of course. So I uninstalled it and tried to install AVG 8, but then discovered the puter doesnt even have SP2 on it! sheesh! some people should not be allowed to own computers....

Anyways, SP2 is downloading onto memory stick at present and superantispyware is running. Will hopefully be able to install SP2 when its down.,

Tried connecting the puter to the net, but it was blocking all microsoft update sites and anything that related to spyware, virus or updates it jumps back to a fresh google screen. So something is really screwed up in there!

Will get back when (if) I am able to get it all run and get some logs.

 

Hi SeaComms,

If you haven't already loaded SP2, please wait until the computer is clean. In any case, be sure your System Restore is turned on and not off and do not toggle it, because you may need to be able to get back to an earlier restore point if the SP2 installation doesn't work right.

abri