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windows 7 ultimate - after malware, no icons, no right menu, no c-n-p, no profil
obieephyhm:
I'm afraid I have some trouble navigating this forum and it delays my response to you. It is probably right in front of me but I have been unable to see how to PM you the information you requested. It may not be entirely necessary but you can decide if you read the following. I posted the following just moments ago on another site from which I solicited help. It is the current status of how things are with my DAW.
---------------
Update:
Over the holiday period, I have worked with BleepingComputer.com and Tweaking.com (author of Windows Repair or WR, for short) attempting to get my beloved (and rapidly becoming necessary) DAW back into production-level capability. There were a lot of frustrating cycles of trying things and basically getting nowhere, doing hours and hours of online searching trying to find a clue and working with suggestions I got here.
There have been partial successes. After checking for possible disk errors, I located what I believe to have been the primary problem with being unable to log into my preferred Win7 user account as being corrupt natuser.* files. I do now know that there are no hardware issues on the drives, as I can test them. I do not know if the corruption is the result of the malware or from various aborted attempts to get the machine/profile operational again -- or some combinstion therein. In the end I removed these (carefully archiving them before hand just in case) and, after a couple of attemtps got back to being able to log on. I then set about to restore my icons and arrange my desktop.
This led to the second set of problems involving getting icons to be visible and, after much research and looking at windows explorer settings and registry entries, I went back to my tool of choice, WR but there, again, I ran into problems because the program would periodically fail to run with an error message of 'invalid picture' particularly in either standard or safe mode in my preferred user profile. Research seemed to indicate this was due to changes made to access rights -- which can be corrected with a repair option inside Windows Repair but I couldn't run it from within my profile. I could, however, run it from within the administrator or my secondary administrator (created years ago when I had to do repairs from having gotten a root-type virus). Also, I found that WR would seem to run better from a normal startup than from trying to use it in safe mode. But most icon's got restored although several of them had their program pointers reset to a disk drive letter that hasn't existed in this system since I upgraded my 'c' drive to being an SSD (four to six years ago?) but I can edit them and they find the right icon. A bit tedious but at least my desktop begins to get back it's former appearance.
I may not have done this all as the experts might have preferred but I had to get something going or go into a depression that would make a hurricane look like a spring shower.
In any case, I can routinely log into my preferred profile and most programs appear to run although, my testing hasn't been extensive. However, not all is yet right with the world because, at this point, the remaining issues are not trivial and could be from either the malware infection, the corrupt ntuser.* issue or things being set back to 'default' (from a Win7 standpoint) which keeps the most pressing problems at hand. They are:
1) unable to restore from any backups made.
2) unable to make and then reuse a Restore Point
3) unable to update Win7x64 (regardless of profile used to log in)
4) unable to install software (regardless of profile used to log in)
5) unable to update installed software (ditto)
Of these 3, 4 and 5 most concern me but I'm thinking that if I can find what's wrong with the last three, the first two might come along for the ride, so to speak. Or maybe its the other way round.
So, I put this out here so you know the current status and that those here might be able to make useful suggestions to resolve the remaining issues.
obieephyhm:
Additional searching and attempting different things finds me scratching my head more and more (as if balding weren't bad enough) --
1) Does anyone know why I would have a file "00000000.0x0" dated 1/11/2060?
2) I have some user names/groups under the securities tab that I don't recognize. When I attempt to use the MMC to access Local Security Policy, I get a "an attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist". In searching for ways to fix that, I find basically the same solution everywhere (relink DLL files) doesn't work -- it errors out with a file not found message. I attempted to dump the dll file listing to a bat file but the file never gets created nor is there any error message that I can find.
obieephyhm:
Okay, I found the CBS log from running the SFC. How do I interpret the results -- it does end by saying the it found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.
Boggin:
A repair install or clean install would be required to resolve the sfc /scannow report but you will need your Ultimate product key.
If you are still unable to find it then there's a program called Keyfinder Plus.
https://www.top-password.com/knowledge/find-windows-7-ultimate-product-key.html
Keyfinder Plus isn't a free program but this article lists some that are - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_install/lost-windows-7-ultimate-key/0692e327-2227-44e2-9f42-9f1033ddbe28
Make a note of it.
I've received your PM with your address - do I add USA to the bottom of it ?
I'll burn you a couple of Win 7 x64 Universal install disks and post them to you on Monday.
I don't think booting up with the install disk, navigating to the Install screen to select Repair your computer, selecting Command Prompt and entering these cmds would do it but you could give that a try prior to performing a repair install.
bcdedit |find "osdevice"
For clarity, that is a Pipe symbol before find and is the uppercase of \
Using your partition letter instead of the X I have exampled, enter -
sfc /scannow /offbootdir=X:\ /offwindir=X:\Windows
Enter exit to close the cmd window, remove the install disk and restart.
You could then perform a sfc /scannow in normal mode to see if it still reports the same corruption.
If it does then you would need to perform a repair install.
If your programs still don't work properly after the repair install then you would need to reinstall them.
obieephyhm:
truly, a repair install would be the only viable option -- the DAW is a complex intermix of years of accumulated music production/instrument/utility software that takes several months to even begin to re-install and re-integrate from scratch and I've done it too many times over the years when I was far better mentally equipped than I am at my current age/health. So this is to be vastly preferred, if there is no other way to repair the damage. I will do my best to give you the information you require but, in the interest of full disclosure, we have a pending death in the family that may intrude on your efforts to help me in the short run.
Bear in mind, regardless of whether I can locate my original W7x64 ultimate key (and, thus far, I've been entirely frustrated in my attempts to find it) I **do have** two unused/uninstalled W7x64 Pro disks with keys that I purchased as backups (being unable at the time to acquire Ultimate disks) which can be used instead (I think; I prefer Ultimate but only because that's what I'm used to) so long as that doesn't interfere with what you intend to send to me.
Yes, USA is the country.
Also, you should pm me about how I can reimburse you for your trouble and expense.
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