All desktop icons are inactive and colourless

[ockerb]

Hi everyone
I have a computer running win xp pro. It boots ok but when I get to the desktop all the icons have lost there association and are inactive. I can't run any program from an icon and this includes any exe file from a cd as well. I tried to reinstall xp over the system I had, it eventually finished after a lot of cancelling because the message kept coming up that windows needed to know what program was used to run particular files. Most of the files it needed associating with were .dll and .exe files. I can boot up with a win xp disk and go into the recovery mode but i'm not sure what to do.
Any help to get me started on this would be greatly appreciated.
Ockerb

 

[bcastner]

Do you have access to a second machine? If so, download and create a Windows Ultimate Boot CD. This is based on the famous Bart PE:

http://www.windowsubcd.com/index.htm

(If the pages seem empty, scroll down on that site. It has been acting up).

Second, boot you problem machine and copy off the user data.

Third, Insert the XP CD and do a clean installation. I am not sure what malware does this, but I have tried many things to clean it: AdaWare, Spybot, Giant, Microsoft Beta, Killbox, etc.. You are looking at a clean re-installation of XP.

 

[ockerb]

Thanks for your quick response Bill, as much as I knew everyone was going to say what you did, I was hoping for something different. It is hard to accept how useless I feel when I can't make any inroads whatsoever with this problem. I just can't think of any other way of tackling this issue other than what you suggested.

Ockerb

 

[bcastner]

I just rebuilt my son's machine yesterday for the same issue, and several client workstations in the last month.

I am a big fan of freeware malware removal tools, as faq608-4650 suggests.

But there is something going around since late November, that creates such a mess that a clean install is the only answer.

I have tried killbox, and special treatment for newer VX2 variants:

http://www.lavasoftsupport.com/index.php?showtopic=54511

and I suspect you could in fact do a decent removal job.

But I have resigned myself to a clean install in your circumstance. (That is not 100% true, it do a clean install with a slipstream of SP2).

I would love something less bothersome as a solution. But what I have seen of this malware is that it starts by disabling Regedit, TaskManager, etc.. the takes out your desktop .LNK, then stops any .EXE and by then I have quit. The normal advice to repair your file associations will not help; nor a simpler Repair/Upgrade installation.

Do the clean install.

 

[speaktek]

Ouch! That's where I'm at now...time to start doing back-ups!!!

 

[ockerb]

Hi Everyone, I started this post back in January and resigned myself to to carrying out a clean and fresh install as suggested by Bill. As expected that did the trick. Alas, I have a friend who rang me this evening telling me he has exactly the same problem. I haven't been exposed to the problem since january so haven't had to tackle it again. Before I do I'm wondering has it become more widespread and is there a known fix for this kind of problem now......or back to a bootable WinXP pro disk again