My parents have done it again... they've really messed up their system this time (Windows 7).
Last week, my father mentioned that Microsoft Security essentials didnt have a successful run for a number of days. I remoted in to their machine using logmein and found that the AV service was disabled and couldnt be restarted. I did a full uninstall then reinstall of the AV.
While that was going on, I noticed there was no action center. I had to open it from the start menu, and it turned out he action center service couldnt be started. I popped open services.msc and discovered that the action center service no longer even existed. Joy. I started looking into restoring that while the AV scan was running.
Sure enough, it found some infected files. I had it attempt to fix them and at some point had to reboot. Now, every time the machine starts up, MSE says that there are 2 threats (that never seem to get properly removed) but also windows gives a nasty "windows has encountered a critical error and will close in one minute" message. The 2 threats listed are win32/Sirefef.R and Win32/Sirefef.AH. The machine also reboots in safe mode.
Following ideas from this page, I've tried a couple of things:
I am not sure where to go from here. I dont know why the drives arent mounting, and cant remove the virus through windows. Any other suggestions?
Last week, my father mentioned that Microsoft Security essentials didnt have a successful run for a number of days. I remoted in to their machine using logmein and found that the AV service was disabled and couldnt be restarted. I did a full uninstall then reinstall of the AV.
While that was going on, I noticed there was no action center. I had to open it from the start menu, and it turned out he action center service couldnt be started. I popped open services.msc and discovered that the action center service no longer even existed. Joy. I started looking into restoring that while the AV scan was running.
Sure enough, it found some infected files. I had it attempt to fix them and at some point had to reboot. Now, every time the machine starts up, MSE says that there are 2 threats (that never seem to get properly removed) but also windows gives a nasty "windows has encountered a critical error and will close in one minute" message. The 2 threats listed are win32/Sirefef.R and Win32/Sirefef.AH. The machine also reboots in safe mode.
Following ideas from this page, I've tried a couple of things:
- Running Shutdown -a from the command prompt. This does NOT stop me from getting logged off every 60 seconds..
- Running the Kaspersky Resue Disk 10 - I can boot into this utility, but it does NOT mount any hard disks.
- Malwarebytes boot cd - I also tried this boot CD, no hard disks either.
I am not sure where to go from here. I dont know why the drives arent mounting, and cant remove the virus through windows. Any other suggestions?
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