Desktop wiped out

I have a user who used hijackthis and wiped out everything. No it was not me, lol. She was having a lot of trouble with spyware, worms, virus', and such and was told this hijackthis would help. I took a look and she doesn't even have a taskbar, there is no icons, nothing. She's running XP Home SP1 on a Pentium 4 2.5ghz 550mb. I can't even do a system restore, it has a checked not to establish restore points. What to do? Please help me to help her. It would definately put me into her good graces. lol. Thanks, Craig

 

Good Graces-------=

Sounds like its time for a repair or clean install(warning:lots of times the viruses etc replicate in the startup so a clean install is a good idea)

Hopefully she has her cd for an install ??
sytem restore empty of restore points or did they never make any??

coffeestartingtoworkyawn

 

Thanks for replying. She said she didn't turn it off but then again I don't think she would know how to. Is it possible that one of these trouble programs turned it off and if so how do I find a restore point? Also, she has a load of music files that i can see in safestart but they've got a generic icon that says their music match files but, again, don't have the classic audio/video icon. Lastly, If she has her XP cd is there a way do a repair based on the current condition?

 

If she has the cd pop it in, and the first screen should give you the option to repair or install ,choose repair and go from there(this will hopefully save all her music as a clean install will kill it all!!)

Trytherepairoptionfirst!

 

Ok, she has the CD. What I need to know is what are the proceedures to do the repair of her desktop and taskbar?

 

Choosing the reair option should replace any missing or lost .dll etc that are missing or removed.

Somehow it sounds like the sys tray was deleted or moved (no taskbar)

If it does not boot from the cd (do you have any access to the system?)
you may have to change the boot setup in the cmos(should work by itself if you can get in windows thoo!)

soooo- Try the repair option from the cd menu that should fix her main problems

 

Yes I can boot from CD and can choose the repair option and the select 1 go throught the administrator password and I get to the c:\winnt to choose a command. What system files do i copy from the cd? Thanks

 

For the repair do not choose the first option, choose install instead, do not worry because the next screen will offer the repair option again, now you choose repair, what wil then happen is XP will look like it is doing a fresh install do not worry it is not, it will ask for the product key once you give it leave XP to finish the repair once completed all will be good again..She will need to reinstall service packs again and other windows updates but a small price to pay.

 

Thank you. Just to be sure when i go into the installation and choose repair none of her music files, which are quite extensive, will be lost? Thanks

 

Look in the registry, Start > Run > and type regedit.

Look for these two keys and see if you can find them.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\explorer.exe

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\iexplorer.exe

Steve

 

Desktop is back and in good working order. Thank you very very much for all your help. Craig