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General Vista Help and Support The general Windows Vista discussion forum, for topics not covered elsewhere. (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)

Programs won't start



 
 
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  #11 (permalink)  
Old February 27th 12, 02:53 AM posted to microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
Percival P. Cassidy
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6
Default Programs won't start

On 02/23/12 08:05 pm, Joe Morris wrote:
"Percival P. wrote:
On 02/23/12 06:21 am, Joe Morris wrote:

[system will not run a .exe file...]

[snippage]


OK. I've tried again from the command prompt after booting the WinVista
installation disk, and the registry settings all seem fine. Is there
something else that would prevent execution of .exe files and that could
be fixed easily? E.g., an essential file has been deleted or renamed?

The restore-from-a-backup feature does not recognize the three CDs as a
valid backup set -- which does not surprise me. They contain a bunch of
.zip files of the specified date in various subdirectories, but I suspect
that they contain only a backup of his data files at that date. The
restore-from-a-backup feature is expecting the backup to be on DVDs or an
external drive.


Sorry...no ideas at this time that are practical across a newsgroup.

When something like this turns up at the office I'll make a best-effort
attempt to find a problem - usually involving my remoting into the machine
(or, for Certain People, an on-site visit) - but if nothing turns up I toss
the ticket back to the help desk to have them schedule a reimage of the
user's machine. The times I've seen your symptoms the systems involved were
WinXP and the .exe and/or exefile entries had been corrupted by the user
messing around with the associations dialog. In a business world triage is
necessary, and getting the end user back to work is a high priority.

There may yet be a simple explanation and fix for your problem; perhaps
someone else among the newsgroup readership has a suggestion?


I gave up trying to restore the computer to its pre-virus state and
restored it to its factory-fresh state -- after making two separate
backups to different external drives of my own. I hooked it up to our
wired LAN so that I would not have to enter any SSID and password info,
and let it get all the updates. The first round was about 110 important
updates, but it had to reboot a few times before it was done with those.
Then I let it install the recommended updates (17 of them, IIRC), did
another backup to an external drive, shut the machine down, and went and
did other things. When I fired it up again the next time, it wanted to
install FP2, which (it informed me) included all previous fixes, and I
let it do so. I did yet another backup and shut down, at which point it
informed me that it had yet another 39 updates to install before it
actually switched off.

I then installed Microsoft Security Essentials and Macrium Reflect Free
and attached the image I had made of the infected partition as a
browsable drive with its own drive letter. As I was restoring his
original user and program files from the backup to a separate folder,
MSE found and deleted four instances of malware. I then did yet another
backup.

I've recommended that the student buy himself an external hard disk --
not a good time to do so, I know, because of the Thailand floods and
consequent price rises -- and make full backups from time to time.

I left his account as non-administrator, and I must remember to advise
him against making it a an administrator account.

Thanks again for your help, Joe.

Perce
  #12 (permalink)  
Old February 27th 12, 07:28 PM posted to microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 30
Default Programs won't start

On Feb 23, 5:21*am, "Joe Morris" wrote:
"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:









On 02/22/12 07:25 pm, Joe Morris wrote:


[system will not run a .exe file...]


[snippage]


I can see the problem with the registry by comparison with the extracts
Joe Morris posted in reply to my original message, but since no programs
will run, I cannot use regedit to try to fix the problem.


Do you have, or can you borrow, an installation disk for either Vista or
Windows 7? *We won't be installing anything from it, but it can give you
the
tools to inspect and edit the Registry.


(Incidentally...if you can see the Registry settings, what tool are you
using that can't edit them?)


snip


OK, I haven't yet tried your instructions that follow, but I think what I
did comes close: I booted from a WinPE-based Macrium Reflect recovery CD,
went to the command line and executed REGEDIT. I could see that the only
thing under HKLM/Software/Classes/.exe was the Default. I then created the
new Keys and values that you quoted me earlier and exited REGEDIT, but the
new values did not seem to "stick." (I thought that any changes were saved
automatically on exit, and I didn't know about the [UN]LOAD HIVE command.)


What REGEDIT displays by default is the Registry for the system that was
booted...so you were looking at, and editing, the settings for the WinPE
system. *Since it's on a read-only optical disk, they survived only until
the machine was rebooted. *Editing a hive from a read-write disk, OTOH,
results in persistent changes...regardless of whether you fat-fingered a
change.

Note that WinPE is a *very* stripped-down vesion of Windows, so it's missing
(or has different Registry settings for) many of the settings you expect to
find in a full installation.

#include DireWarningsAboutRegistryEditing.h

What the load/unload hive function does is to graft another (non-booted)
system's Registry components onto the display of the booted system's
Registry. *(And it's a bit more complex than that, since HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
is actually a merger of several separate hives...look at the contents of
C:\Windows\System32\Config .)

I'll try your most recent instructions and report back.


Again, good luck.

Joe


HOW IS YOUR MALE VAGINA DOING JOE MORRIS? THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO
PEOPLE WHO REFUSE TO OBEY THE FACT THAT THE THREAD HAS BEEN CLOSED!
JUST FYI! THREAD REMAINS CLOSED!
  #13 (permalink)  
Old February 27th 12, 07:32 PM posted to microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 30
Default Programs won't start

On Feb 23, 11:58*am, "Percival P. Cassidy"
wrote:
On 02/23/12 06:21 am, Joe Morris wrote:









[system will not run a .exe file...]


[snippage]


I can see the problem with the registry by comparison with the extracts
Joe Morris posted in reply to my original message, but since no programs
will run, I cannot use regedit to try to fix the problem.


Do you have, or can you borrow, an installation disk for either Vista or
Windows 7? *We won't be installing anything from it, but it can give you
the
tools to inspect and edit the Registry.


(Incidentally...if you can see the Registry settings, what tool are you
using that can't edit them?)


snip


OK, I haven't yet tried your instructions that follow, but I think what I
did comes close: I booted from a WinPE-based Macrium Reflect recovery CD,
went to the command line and executed REGEDIT. I could see that the only
thing under HKLM/Software/Classes/.exe was the Default. I then created the
new Keys and values that you quoted me earlier and exited REGEDIT, but the
new values did not seem to "stick." (I thought that any changes were saved
automatically on exit, and I didn't know about the [UN]LOAD HIVE command.)


What REGEDIT displays by default is the Registry for the system that was
booted...so you were looking at, and editing, the settings for the WinPE
system. *Since it's on a read-only optical disk, they survived only until
the machine was rebooted. *Editing a hive from a read-write disk, OTOH,
results in persistent changes...regardless of whether you fat-fingered a
change.


Note that WinPE is a *very* stripped-down vesion of Windows, so it's missing
(or has different Registry settings for) many of the settings you expect to
find in a full installation.


#includeDireWarningsAboutRegistryEditing.h


What the load/unload hive function does is to graft another (non-booted)
system's Registry components onto the display of the booted system's
Registry. *(And it's a bit more complex than that, since HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
is actually a merger of several separate hives...look at the contents of
C:\Windows\System32\Config .)


I'll try your most recent instructions and report back.


Again, good luck.


OK. I've tried again from the command prompt after booting the WinVista
installation disk, and the registry settings all seem fine. Is there
something else that would prevent execution of .exe files and that could
be fixed easily? E.g., an essential file has been deleted or renamed?

The restore-from-a-backup feature does not recognize the three CDs as a
valid backup set -- which does not surprise me. They contain a bunch of
.zip files of the specified date in various subdirectories, but I
suspect that they contain only a backup of his data files at that date.
The restore-from-a-backup feature is expecting the backup to be on DVDs
or an external drive.

Perce


HOW IS YOUR MALE VAGINA DOING PERCIVAL P. CASSIDY? JUST FYI! THREAD
REMAINS CLOSED!
  #14 (permalink)  
Old March 4th 12, 05:27 PM posted to microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
Bob F[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 23
Default Programs won't start

Groundhog Gus wrote:
Don't know how Dell works, but I have an HP with Vista Home Premium.
Instead of a disc supplied by the manufacturer, your disk should be
partitioned into a C: and a D:. The D: drive should also have system
saved files on it. If you know the DATE that 'no .exe' happened,
then it might be simple for you. If not, you'll either have to edit
the the registery or completely rebuild the C: drive.
Try this, when you first boot up the system, you should have which
Function key to press to do a system recovery. On mine it's F11. Keep
pressing it until you get the recovery screen. Then on the screen
select ADVANCED. It should show you a list of files you can recover.
Select the one that dates BEFORE you know the 'no .exe' error occured
and let the system do it's thing. The great part of the ADVANCED
option is it will restore the system files to that date and ONLY the
system files. Any of your regular files will not be changed. It
takes about 15 minutes and saves you a hole lot of work. This option
has saved my butt many times. It's worth a try.


Sounds exactly like the results from the XPantivirus 2011 thing that infected my
machine. I finally found a patch to run which corrected the settings so it would
work again. Can't tell you offhand where I found it.


  #15 (permalink)  
Old March 4th 12, 05:30 PM posted to microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
Bob F[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 23
Default Programs won't start

Bob F wrote:
Groundhog Gus wrote:
Don't know how Dell works, but I have an HP with Vista Home Premium.
Instead of a disc supplied by the manufacturer, your disk should be
partitioned into a C: and a D:. The D: drive should also have system
saved files on it. If you know the DATE that 'no .exe' happened,
then it might be simple for you. If not, you'll either have to edit
the the registery or completely rebuild the C: drive.
Try this, when you first boot up the system, you should have which
Function key to press to do a system recovery. On mine it's F11. Keep
pressing it until you get the recovery screen. Then on the screen
select ADVANCED. It should show you a list of files you can recover.
Select the one that dates BEFORE you know the 'no .exe' error occured
and let the system do it's thing. The great part of the ADVANCED
option is it will restore the system files to that date and ONLY the
system files. Any of your regular files will not be changed. It
takes about 15 minutes and saves you a hole lot of work. This option
has saved my butt many times. It's worth a try.


Sounds exactly like the results from the XPantivirus 2011 thing that
infected my machine. I finally found a patch to run which corrected
the settings so it would work again. Can't tell you offhand where I
found it.


This could be a good start.


  #16 (permalink)  
Old March 4th 12, 05:30 PM posted to microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
Bob F[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 23
Default Programs won't start

Bob F wrote:
Groundhog Gus wrote:
Don't know how Dell works, but I have an HP with Vista Home Premium.
Instead of a disc supplied by the manufacturer, your disk should be
partitioned into a C: and a D:. The D: drive should also have system
saved files on it. If you know the DATE that 'no .exe' happened,
then it might be simple for you. If not, you'll either have to edit
the the registery or completely rebuild the C: drive.
Try this, when you first boot up the system, you should have which
Function key to press to do a system recovery. On mine it's F11. Keep
pressing it until you get the recovery screen. Then on the screen
select ADVANCED. It should show you a list of files you can recover.
Select the one that dates BEFORE you know the 'no .exe' error occured
and let the system do it's thing. The great part of the ADVANCED
option is it will restore the system files to that date and ONLY the
system files. Any of your regular files will not be changed. It
takes about 15 minutes and saves you a hole lot of work. This option
has saved my butt many times. It's worth a try.


Sounds exactly like the results from the XPantivirus 2011 thing that
infected my machine. I finally found a patch to run which corrected
the settings so it would work again. Can't tell you offhand where I
found it.


This could be a good start.
http://www.malwareguides.com/xp-anti...val-guide.html


 




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