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tryingtolearn

An elderly lady friend of mine let her son use her computer. He said he opened an email (yahoo) and immediately knew he shouldn't have. (I checked his email and he had hidden a folder titled "Porn" with one email, which I deleted) Well, she uses aol, didn't have an antivirus program, hasn't done any updates in the 3 years since her husband died. There is a spysheriff program I have been unable to delete.? We ran Housecall, one of the viruses it was unable to remove.? I downloaded and ran SpyBot S&D, but there were popups that said it couldn't change the registry, and then another message that the buttons were unreadable.? After running it a couple of times with the same results, I uninstalled it.? Well, we upgraded her aol to 9 that has mcafee, ran that, ran housecall from trend micro, and the problems either repaired, quarantined or deleted. She said there was one that she couldn't do anything with, and I didn't write it down when she told me. Now when she boots up there is an error message that says something about the file 'msnethlp32.exe' is not found (or missing, I am not sure of the exact wording of the message.)

I am on my way over there to see what is what and would like to know how to deal with this problem.? I think I'm in way over my head.? I've already spent about 10 hours on the computer and several more trying to find out what to do.? Should she just take it to BestBuy and have them fix it?

Could anyone help me to get this resolved?

joe5

Lets see what whe can do , i don't know youre O.S. but see if you can run Ewido and post its log ,and after that post a logfile from Hijackthis?

See link below for HJT.

Please download ewido Security Suite[list] [*]Install ewido security suite [*]When installing, under "Additional Options" uncheck "Install background guard" and "Install scan via context menu." [*]Launch ewido, there should be a big "E" icon on your desktop, double-click it. [*]The program will prompt you to update click the "OK" button [*]The program will now go to the main screen

You will need to update ewido to the latest definition files.
[*]On the left hand side of the main screen click update [*]Click on Start

The update will start and a progress bar will show the updates being installed. After the updates are installed, exit ewido.

Once the updates are installed do the following:
[*]If you have an "always on" connection to the internet, physically disconnect that connection until you are finished with Safe Mode and have rebooted back into normal mode.
[*]Reboot into Safe Mode, you can do this by restarting your computer, then contiunally tapping F8 until a menu appears. Use your up arrow key to highlight Safe Mode, then hit enter. Then, run ewido.
[*]Close all open windows/programs/folders. Have nothing else open while ewido performs its scan!
[*]Click on scanner [*]Click on Settings
Under "How to scan" all boxes should be selected

Under "Possibly unwanted software" all boxes should be selected

Under "What to scan" select scan every file

Click OK

[*]Click on Complete system scan [*]Let the program scan the machine
[*]If ewido finds anything, it will pop up a notification. NOTE: We have been finding some cases of false positives with the new version of Ewido, so we need to step through the fixes one-by-one. If Ewido finds something that you KNOW is legitimate (for example, parts of AVG Antivirus, AOL, pcAnywhere and the game "Risk" have been flagged. In particular, watch for alerts that have the word "Heuristic" in them - if you recognize the file name as "friendly," these may actually be false positives) select "none" as the action. DO NOT check "Perform action with all infections." If you are unsure of an entry, select "none" for the time being. I'll see that in the log you will post later and let you know if ewido needs to be run again.

Once the scan has completed, there will be a button located on the bottom of the screen named Save report.
[*]Click Save report [*]Save the report to your desktop [*]Exit ewido

tryingtolearn

It is a 98 SE and Ewido says it is for Windows 2000 and XP.

joe5

Then you can just post the log from Hijackthis.

tryingtolearn

I called my friend.? She said the msnethlp32.exe program is needed for opening files.? when she clicks on locate, it comes up program not found . when she clicks on cancel, it shuts down her computer. when she clicks on ok, it pops up again.? The icon for aol 9 is gone.? I had her go to start and the aol 8 was still there and clicked on it.? an error message came up either program not found or msnethlp32.exe needed for applications. :banghead:

Can I copy hijackthis to a cd and install it on her computer?? Or is there something else we should do?

joe5

You can copy Hijackthis to a floppy or cd and then go to her pc and start it in safemode(keep tapping F8 when booting up) , then copy HJT to her pc and run it to make a log file.
Just start up HJT and select the top option "do a system scan and safe a logfile" , then over HJT a log will popup.
Then copy and paste the content to a post here.

tryingtolearn

thanks. I'll give it a try :-)