combofix slim - and now system won't boot back userinit prob

bruhe · Dec 6, 2007

I was dutifully following the thorough instructions - got to windows xp cleaning, started gathering logs and saving them - and did combo fix - and when the system restarted, there was a shell error - i couldn't log into windows - desktop won't load and im told there's a userinit problem.... i can't get in as admin or myself - my windows xp pro startup won't accept any of my ids or passwords... this is a work computer.
so basically im hosed. has this happened to anyone else and if so is there a fix? I'm a newbie here but not to computers - if you can believe it -
i did see that my userinit key had ntos.exe... but no actually userinit string... so im wondering if the culprits figured out this fix? any help is good - else i'll be reloading the entire works.
thanks

chaslang · Dec 7, 2007

Welcome to Major Geeks!

What you had is an information and password stealing trojan which may have compromised your security and your companies security. See the below:

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2007-040208-5335-99&tabid=2

If you cannot boot in normal mode or safe mode, you may have suffered registry corruption due to this trojan and that could be why you cannot logon in. A possible solution (not perfect) is the below link but reinstall may be safer due to the nature of the trojan.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545&sd=tech

If you had truly lost the userinit.exe string you will not be able to login and the above registry repair would be one fix.

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combofix slim - and now system won't boot back userinit prob

bruhe Private E-2

chaslang MajorGeeks Admin - Master Malware Expert Staff Member