Quick question about Vista

Hi guys

My mate has a Compaq Notebook and recently we found it has had a piece of malware called Microsoft.Windows.ActiveDesktop, and he has the following problem -

When he has an explorer window open and he clicks on close explorer.exe terminates and we have to restart it by starting task manager using ctrl+shift+escape and then running explorer from the file>new task option. All he is left with is his pretty desktop background picture otherwise...

It doesn't happen all the time and we're unsure if it's linked to the malware, but seeing as my mates not really computer literate yet I've been trying to solve the issue for him and while he doesn't view it as a major issue I'm inclined to disagree with him...

I've tried runing AVG and Spybot and a number of other anti-virus apps and none have found anything since we got rid of the above item of malware.

We installed SP1 in the hope it would cure the problem by replacing the explorer.exe but it hasn't. (dumb idea probably I guess).

I've tried using the sfc /scannow command but that didn't do anything either - in XP it asks for the installation disk immediately (or it did when I tried it) but in Vista all it did was go through the verification process, either it didn't find anything wrong (which there clearly is) or it didn't work properly...

So to the point - the only solutions I am left with are:

1. A clean install - something we want to avoid as he has a number of apps for his machine (HP stuff and something for his wireless router) that he doesn't have disks for and has no backup copies of and therefore would not be able to re-install them, as far as we are aware...

2. Using the upgrade option, we have a Vista install disk, we can remove SP1 (I think) and we can therefore attempt to upgrade the OS.

Questions are these - he already has Vista Ultimate so would the upgrade option still work or be available (after we remove SP1) and would the upgrade replace the explorer.exe file and any others that may be affected?

Thanks in advance for any advice/help

 

You could simply try a restore point - that might get rid of it
Failing that, you could try a "repair" installation - should fix any Windows errors you have but keep your files. Not sure if it removes your programs, but on older Windows versions it didn't...

 

Reboot Vista in safe mode and run the virus scanners again.

 

HP should've put a recovery partition on the disk... you could restore the factory-installed OS from that. But since you have the disc I'd recommend a clean install. The HP apps are probably crap anyway.

As mentioned, system restore may be an option too.

 

Tried system restore, he only seems to have restore points from today.

Tried safe mode+virus scanners=no joy.

And clean install/restore from backup partition is not an option as he has something relating to his router on their (don't ask me what though as I seem to be able to use his router without that piece of software...)

Question that really needs answering is this - he already has Vista Ultimate so would the upgrade option still work or be available (after we remove SP1) and would the upgrade replace the explorer.exe file and any others that may be affected?

Thanks

 

Ok so I tried the upgrade option and it did nothing. I even copied an explorer.exe from another clean Vista install and that didn't do anything.

What else could cause this problem, he hasn't got any viruses. He did have Norton 360 installed and he uninstalled it recently using add/remove programs - could this be causing the problem and is it possible to solve it without a full clean install?

Thanks