Virus

Can you spawn another instance of explorer and see if you still have the problem?

ALT+CTRL+DEL -> Task Manager -> File -> New Task (Run...) -> explorer

Doesn't work I tried. I was able to get to the task manager and It showed all the services were stopped and it's not letting me restart them either because they are disabled or don't exist. I have the hard drive plugged in externally and I can read all the documents pictures etc

I have couple of questions:

1. Did you recently install anything? If so what?
2. Have you tried Right clicking and selecting Open on an icon?

Here are several suggestions:
1. If you have antivirus installed on your system you should do a scan to see if it picks up any viruses or malware.
2. Run Windows Update to ensure that your OS and Office are fully up to date.
3. If you have your original driver for your mouse you should reinstall or check is there is a newer version.

nothing works on the computer thats why i put it external

This may not be a virus issue.

Restart with Win7 disk in the dvd drive and boot from it.

Choose to repair windows when you get the option

Choose to use system restore to reset your computer back a good restore point

Have you tried going into safe mode and doing a system restore

start - all programs -accessories - system folders - system restore

pick a bolded date.

then download and run the following in the order it is listed

1. RougeKiller
2. Malwarebytes
3. TDSSKiller

this above 3 came from a fellow EE name SSharma.

If you don't have the dvd, restart and press F8 until you see "Safe Mode"
Boot into safe mode

Then do a system restore

it didnt let me do anything in safe mode either..

When you opened the Task Manager, how many processes are running and what are they?

everything was basically disabled

Try slaving the hard drive to a clean PC, run a virus scan on it, before deleting the viruses check the log to see where the viruses where located and see if those viruses have affected any key files to the OS. If the viruses have affected the OS ensure that you have the OS disc and replace those infected files, or if your PC and laptop are the same OS then you should be able to copy those files from one and place on a thumb drive and replace the damaged files.

Then run the list of anti-viruses I have listed above.

im scanning it with malwarebytes, spybot, norton, housecall and so far nothing is showing anything, any other programs to suggest?

You can combofix and my other favorite is superanti-spyware

http://www.combofix.org/

http://download.cnet.com/SuperAntiSpyware-Free-Edition/3000-8022_4-10523889.html

i forgot about those thank you for the suggestion

I am not sure if anyone still uses it, but a favorite for a while was HiJackThis

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/

thanks will it read external drives?

yes it does.

thanks

You're welcome

everything is still scanning and nothing is coming up yet

have you taken permissions on the users profile along with the Windows folder? I have come across where if I have not taken permissions that those folders will be skipped.

I have the HD plugged in as external otherwise i cant access it at all. i just picked on this specific drive to scan its taking a lot of time

have the programs finished their scans? Sometimes it this can be a lengthy procedure. I recommended letting them finish the scans and keep us updated.

malwarebytes found nothing, the others are still scanning I hope it finds something..

so far nothing was found, I guess i will try combofix i hope it scans external drives, other then this any other suggestions please

If combofix does not resolve the issue, my only other suggestion that I have would be to create an image or obtain another hard drive and re-install the OS on the new hard drive and migrate the data over. Unless another EE has other suggestions. You can also request Attention to this post from EE.

I was afraid you were going to say that :/, I am waiting for spybot to finish and then ill try combo.. thank you for the suggestions, I really appreciate you help

Don't forget to try the "Request Attention" at the top of the page.

You're welcome.

@avib27,

You should not try to run Combofix for the drive which is connected as external drive to another system.

Let me begin the diagnosis from the start.

When you boot from this HDD, are you loggin in as Administrator?

I doubt that there are some issues running the executables. Please check if below article may be of some help

IF YOU CAN'T RUN .EXES IN AN INFECTED SYSTEM - TheKiller
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_1995.html

This article also recommend you to run the tool named "TheKiller", don't forget to run that.

Sudeep

This looks suspiciously like a bad hard drive.  Run some HDD diagnostics to confirm.  Seagate & WD have freebie downloads on their websites.

I don't see where you've mentioned backing up your critical files and data. If you haven't done that yet, stop what you're doing and take care of that first.

"Slave scans" can't identify 'rogue processes' and most current malware uses a random naming convention for the infectors. Scanning in other than a booted up OS is not so likely to find any malware.

If you can't install the tools you need through the "ALT+CTRL+DEL -> Task Manager -> File -> New Task (Run...)" (mentioned above), you should try the Microsoft Boot CD scanner:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline

In addition to the EE Article mentioned above, some of the basic trouble-shooting steps are covered in these EE Articles:

Rogue-Killer-What-a-great-name
Stop-the-Bleeding-First-Aid-for-Malware

This doesn't seem like a hard drive physical problem to me.  It seems much more like a parasite has damaged things.

Yet, it seems like you *can* run programs.  So I would be looking to do two things:

1) get rid of the parasite(s)
If the tools you've used so far haven't found anything then suspect a root kit.
I use all the tools mentioned in doing cleanups.
The other day I was unable to clean up until I used the ESET online scanner/fixer.
That did the trick in that case.  So, I guess I'd recommend it as none of the others did.
I must say though that I had not run ComboFix yet on that system.
I've also had good results running ComboFix "bare" - without scripts or "expert" help which is generally advised by some expert groups but I usually don't have the days/weeks to spend in that kind of loop and have to take the risk.  So, I do this as a last resort.
(I bias heavily on cleanups rather than resorting to rebuilds .. unless the computer is almost 90% useful after a rebuild).

2) fix the computer
Sometimes when things like this happen there's a fix for it.  You have to search for the particular symptoms and see if there isn't a fix available.  

More often than not, thank goodness, step 1 takes care of step 2 so there's nothing more to do and you don't have to pursue step 2 at all.  But there are those times.....

You could always just boot the system to a linux live CD or USB, let it mount the HDD read-only, and copy files from the HDD and and throw them in the bitbucket.   This will eliminate the OS entirely, and just let you know if you have a data corruption / file system issue,  or HW problem, as I suspect.

1. Go to ubuntu.com & follow instructions for creating  a bootable USB or CDROM that are on the main page.  

2. Boot system to linux,  let it mount the drive (default will be safe, as it is READ ONLY).

3.  then open up a terminal window and type in:
4. cd /mnt/name-of-disk-mount-point
5. cp -R *  /dev/null

That will copy recursively from the current directory (which is the 'root' of the mounted disk into /dev/null, which is a fake device that is referred to as the bit bucket which is just RAM and throw it away).    If you get read errors that say error reading from PHYSICAL device, you know they are hardware errors.   If it says something like file corruption then you know the file is screwed up.

The disk also lets you boot unto memory tests, and there are also GUI hardware diagnostics. in any event, a virus won't affect the system if it is booted to LINUX

Another approach if you really suspect the hard drive is to use:
HDD Regenerator from a boot CD.

I've had hard drives restored with this tool.
Some folks would say that this is a bit of a fool's errand because why not just replace the thing?

If you want to replace it then I've had good luck with Acronis.
Clone the drive .... drive-to-drive
or
Image the drive and put the image on a new HD.
Both are rather equivalent but the first one is faster (a single pass) and the second one takes longer (2 passes) but leaves you with an image on an external hard drive or wherever you saved it.

Open up command prompt and run chkdsk /f /r c: C would represent the drive letter.So if its e use e instead of c.

i tried majority of what everyone suggested and nothing worked. For some reason when i restarted the machine the 40th time windows repair came on and some how repaired it back to normal. I trashed the computer anyway because I don't know if anything was brewing on it that caused the problem to happen in the first place.

I trashed the computer anyway

Do you mean that you reformatted your system?

I couldnt run anything on the pc it kept denying me from doing anything. I ran the seagate Hard Drive test software. It passed the short and long tests.

Correct I reformatted the machine (Trashed)

After windows 7 repair did the repair and restore I scanned it and it came up with spyware but due to the client always complaining about something on the computer I didnt want to take a chance that the same issue will happen again.

The same issue will happen again as it is usually the user that causes the problem to begin with.  They need to browse using something like Cocoon in order to prevent this.  Also a douse of internet education wouldn't hurt.

Ensure that they are using a paid subscription for Anti-virus as well. There are plenty out there to choose from, a couple of suggestions;

AVG
Norton
Avast

If this is a home user, if it's on a domain, then there should be an enterprise version of anti-virus that is installed once joined to the domain, providing that is setup through a GPO.

Its very true its sad seeing many of my bosses clients computers get rocked.. They had Panda cloud security on the computer.. What i Cocoon, its my first time hearing about it.

Cocoon is a browser plugin that prevents malware from being downloaded.  It is not bulletproof by any means, but it is better than using IE or FF or even Chrome.  You can use extensions in chrome (mywot.com - Web of Trust) or linkextender in FF.  But Cocoon is more powerful.  I am not in any way affiliated with Cocoon (getcocoon.com) other than I am a user.  For iPads there is the K9 browser and security integration protocol (i does disable some functionality on the ipad but it also secures it).  You can also use Cocoon on your ipad downloaded from the app store (search for getcocoon).

thank you for the suggestions i really appreciate it. Do you know of any other good apps for the Ipad I just got it.

Another whole thread.  But the answer is yes.  It all depends on what you want to do with it.

So is the issued solved now?

FYI> "trashed" means "broken, destroyed, demolished, thrown away"

You're likely to give a client a heart attack by telling them you trashed their computer when you actually just reinstalled/repaired the o/s.

Can you close question now please thank you.

I've requested that this question be deleted for the following reason:

nothing helped i had to reinstall the operating system

My comments **Posted on 2012-05-10 at 10:17:55ID: 37952808** addressed that exact issue!

"I don't see where you have tried to do a repair install of Win 7.

After running checkdisk as joinaunion recommends ^ go HERE for comprehensive instructions on how to do a repair installation  of Windows 7."


This is the solution that you say worked for you.