[RESOLVED] Bothers PC Messed Up - Again

[Nix]

So my brother has been complaining of issues on his PC running WinMe.

Finally got hold of it and there's a list of things he's typed up.

I haven't got the list with me, but from memory some of them:

1. Logon box always comes up.
2. Office 2000 program icons are incorrect.
3. Can't open My Pictures
4. Can't make backup copy of Kodak Picture CD
5. Can't install Kodak EasyShare software
6. Can't open Internet explorer
7. Avast pops up a window at start stating that the required file is missing.
8. If a CD has pictures or videos on it, can't access it.
9. Shockwave does not work.

I started looking at it last night.

Downloaded TWEAKUI and rebuilt the Icons - fixed problem 2.

Tried using Copy Complete disc option in Nero and although it sat analysing for about a minute and found some errors it did copy the KodakCD - brother mustn't have waited long enough - fixed problem 4.

Tried IE and it opened, but I didn't try connecting anywhere so will need to try this later.

Started trying to work out what was going on with My Pictures without much luck so tried using TWEAKUI to bypass the login box.

Sometimes it worked and other times not so I was either clicking OK or CANCEL and then noticed that settings I had been changing were reverting and finally worked out that there is USER account set up under Control Panel > Users.

Started trying to remove it and kept getting prompted for a name when logging in which then resulted in a new account - went round and round in circles - gave up.

Decided to run Ad-Aware and got an error saying that it could not find the .EXE file because of missing Wininet.dll, so tried SpyBot with the same thing.

Tried search and search wouldn't work.

Since his machine is dual boot with Win2000 I manually located the .dll file on the Win2000 installation and copied to the required location in the WinMe installation.

Tried Ad-Aware again and it worked as did SpyBot.

Ad-Aware found 3 references to PSGuard and Spybot found nothing.

A few weeks back i spent 4 hours on the phone with my brother removing various Ad/Malware and from memory PSGuard was one of them.

Tried my pictures again and it worked as did the installation of Kodak EasyShare software - problems 3 and 5 fixed.

When we did the 4 hours work I got him to install Avast since he had no Antivirus running.

After it installed it ran some sort of scan and listed some files as infected, before I had a chance to advice him he clicked delete.

So now I'm wondering if the WININET.DLL was infected and deleted and thus what else could be gone ?

From what I did last night (5 hours work) the below are fixed (bold):
1. Logon box always comes up.
2. Office 2000 program icons are incorrect.
3. Can't open My Pictures
4. Can't make backup copy of Kodak Picture CD
5. Can't install Kodak EasyShare software
6. Can't open Internet explorer
7. Avast pops up a window at start stating that the required file is missing.
8. If a CD has pictures or videos on it, can't access it.
9. Shockwave does not work.

The login box seems associated with the User account - how do I get rid of it ? On my WinMe system if I click on the Users icon in Control Panel it starts a dialog about creating separate accounts where as my brothers list the account with his name. I need to get his system the same as mine.

Internet explorer - opens haven't tried connecting so maybe that was the issue.

Avast - this was $h!tting me so I uninstalled it and will reinstall when I fix the other issues.

CDs did seem to have a problem if you went My Computer and double click on the CD or right click and Open, but if you right click and explore or search seems fine - maybe the lens needs cleaning.

Shockwave did not even get too.

Needless to say as I started on this at about 11.00pm and finished at about 4.22am and then up at 6.47am I'm a bit 'slow' this morning.

I was thinking of doing an over install to get any missing system files back but don't want to reset any settings.

Any hints / ideas about any of the issues would be great.

[Nix]

Just remember another thing, media files eg WMV, MPG, MPEG etc have the Windows Media Player 9 icon, but if you double clik on one it asks what program to open it with.

Select WMP and check always use this program and it has no effect.

Tried within WMP by unchecking all file types, click apply, close WMP, open WMP, select all file types, click apply, close WMP.

Double click an appropriate WMP file and it opens, but then if you close WMP and DC the same file and it asks what program to open it with?

[Nix]

Used control panel > Passwords to set the PC up for all users to use the same password. It automatically got rid of the the profile that exisited under Users. This fixed issue 1.

Installed the USB drivers for my DSL Modem and then hooked up to the net.

IE6 was able to conenct to sites so I can only think that it was related to the missing Wininet.dll

Reinstalled Avast and reregistered and it all worked.

Updated Ad-Aware, Spybot, Avast, installed A-squared and updated it.

Ran all of them and Ad-Aware picked up a couple of things, Spybot picked up about 36 and A-Squared got a couple too. Pretty much all registry entries with a couple of files.

Update Firefox to 1.0.7

Cleaned the CD rom with a lens cleaner and accessing CDs with pictures or movies worked ok too.

Removed shockwave and flash and then downloaded the latest versions from www.macromedia.com and checked out a few sites, seemed to work ok.

Tried just about everything to fix the media player problem including removing WinAmp3, Quicktime 5 and Realplayer. Nothing I did seemed to work so finally I just did an over the top reinstall of WMP 9 which is what was installed.

Amazingly it worked.

Although I thought I had fixed the issue with the EasyShare installation, it failed a little way into it as opposed to just not even starting.

When it failed it offered to go to the web to find a solution, and an article on the Kodak KB suggested it was a problem with the Windows installer.

I went to MSKB and the first article I read had a list of steps to try in order.

The first was to unregsiter and register Windows installer, I followed the instruction detailed, tried again and the EasyShare software installed correctly.

So all 10 issues have been resolved.

The only problem was that after I changed the PC to use one profile for all users, the password for his mail account in Outlook Express got reset.

I tried guessing a few, as my brother tends to use the same password, but nothing worked. I rang him and asked him what the password was and he thought it was one of two. I tried both with no luck so think I might have locked his account. Oops.

I'm going to write him some documentation on how to keep Ad-Aware, SpyBot, A-Squared and Avast up to date and also how to run them regularly.

Also how to defrag the hard disk regularly, hadn't been done for 444 days.

Thanks everyone for you help and advice another 'patient' saved.