Greetings,
I am currently looking at a computer for a friend, that has Win XP Home. At first, it was loaded with an enourmous amount of spyware/trojans/hijackers. I attacked it with cwshredder, spybot s&d, ewido, and hijack this. I was able to gain back most control. However, I cannot access device manager, network connections, or open IE.
I am able to boot in safe mode with networking, and run all virus scanners, with no results (any more). I have updated to SP2 in safe mode, and have no problems accessing the internet, in safe mode. Obviously something is locking it up in normal mode.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
TJ

Can you get into Device Manager via Start, Run, typing in devmgmt.msc?

Also Start, Run, sfc /checknow may turn up some system file corrections.

I will have to check that when I get home.
Should I run SFC/ scannow, or SFC/ checknow?

I have been googling the problems, and this seems to be either a problem with the removal, or the upgrade to SP2. Not sure which is worse!! LOL

Thanks,
TJ

Sorry, it's /scannow.

I remember that there were issues caused by SP2 in the 'early days', but these were mostly due to running older programs. I personally haven't had one problem with it. Have you downloaded/installed the 'latest' SP2?

Yes I did.
In doing some research, I also found something about WinSock. Supposidly, after running spybot s&d, there may be some corruption. Running a tool called winsockxpfix will correct the registry keys that may have been removed. I also learned that after the sp2 update that there were some problems with lost connectivity. Microsoft has a hotfix for that, which I am also going to try.
I am not sure how this will all effect my inability to right-click my computer > properties during a normal boot, but not in safe mode.
I guess I won't know until tonight when I try.

TJ

OK, so I have tried everything. No dice.
I cannot get to system properties, but I can to dev management. I even tried <win key> + <pause/break>, nothing.
I am at a loss now.

Any other ideas?

TJ

Sorry to be away for so long, this post sort of 'slipped through the cracks'. I was just doing my Outlook mail archiving and noticed the reference to this post. I'm also kind of surprised that no one else has posted to this thread.

If you've tried all of the above suggestions (yours and mine), and you don't have a good restore point to go to, then a "Repair Install" ( http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm ) may be your only course of action.