Hello all,
I have a friend who lives about 3 hours away from me with computer problems. I try to get him to enable remote services on his computer but when we go to open the system box it tells him he doesnt have administrator rights. same thing as when he is logged onto admin in safemode. Just about anything with the system tools or control panel in general gives the same result. i want to remote in but i cant even get it to enable to remote in let alone try to set up a vpn for me to get on from my home. im a computer tech and the only thing i can figure out is either spyware or a virus. also when he trys to remove any software it tells him the same thing. i have never seen anything like this and its got me stumped at the moment. i dont want to have him do a clean install but with the way things are going it looks as if that might be the only hope. if anyone has some ideals on what is causing this it would be greatly appreciated. im in the process of getting him to email a hijackthis log but im still not sure if hell be able to install it and even email it to me.
ps. i try to get msconfig to run in diagnostics mode but it kicks it back to selective startup everytime so i cant have simple services running to maybe catch the thing.

Welcome to PCHF,

At this stage it would seem a HJT log would be the best..indeed only way forward, although if he cannot install it we may be stuck. Does he have any restore points for the PC? If he does then maybe he can "rewind" to an earlier point and test.

He already did a restore point from about a week ago and is still getting the same results. although before hand he would try to log into his "admin" account which is hollywood and it would shut down instanly. after doing some adaware and spybot he finnally got it to actualy boot up and let him do some things. while i was at work today i had alot of free time and found this web page: Computer says that I can not do certain things because it is restricted to contact the system admin? - Yahoo! Answers. it took me an hour and a half to get any response that gave any light to the situation but i am having him try it becuase if not, its going to have to be a fresh install. also i asked around at work today and the only response i had was from a friend who said he couldnt fix the problem and had to a fresh install. as i said, im a computer tech and i asked everyone from the owner of the company to the network admin to the simple techs ( such as myself) and couldnt find anyone who had heard of it or knew what to do other than the previous said.