I'm running Windows XP Home edition on a Dell Dimension 8200 Series Pentium 4 Processer at 1.7Ghz and 256MB RDRAM. which I purchased in December 2001. It is a standalone home computer and not on any sort of business or any other network.
As my topic description indicates, I've lost access to the Control Panel on my machine and also the program to access Microsoft Updates is also being blocked. I'll provide some more specifics a bit later, but first wanted to provide a bit of history.
The problem is less than a month old and I'm relatively sure it is related to some Malware that go onto my machine. My Norton Antivirus program was finding a Trojan AV virus and doing the quanrantine step, but when the machine was turned off and restarted the virus showed up again. The only outward manisfestation I noticed at first was a window dialogue box that popped up about every 5-6 minutes warning me of aberent behavior and recommending I hit OK to download some software to "fix" the problem. There were mispellings in the warnings so I ignored them and never hit OK only the close out upper right hand X.
I also noticed that when I right clicked my Internet Explorer desktip icon and then tried to open Properties I got the following message. Note I do this from time to time to clear out my History and dump temporary internet files.
"This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator."
A few days later I happened to notice that Control Panel was no longer an item on my Start list. I went to My Computer and it wasn't there either. A friend told me how to add things to the Start list so I went in to do that and couldn't find Control Panel there to be added. I did find Printers and Faxes so added that to my Start list and when I opened it it looked normal and listed over on the left side under Other Places was Control Panel. I clicked to open it and got the same message that is in quotes above.
Then I noticed that automatic Microsoft Update downloads weren't getting downloaded. I clicked on Microsoft Update program and got this message:
"[Error number: 0x8DDD0003]
Network policy settings prevent you from using this website to get updates for your computer. If you believe you have received this message in error, please contact your system administrator."
Now to the best of my knowledge, I am set up as the User/Administrator on the machine, at least that is what I recall from 6 years ago when I was setting it up initially. I can't check it because I can't find and open Control Panel where this resides. I also know that I didn't intentionally make these changes to restrict the activities I've described. I could only assume that the Malware had don these things to my machine.
I took my problem to the Malware Board and over the last 10 days or so, GreyKnight17 has been helping me identify and remove the Trojan and some other Malware.
He tells me I now have a clean log and he believes my residual problems are most likely registry setting and/or disabled services issues and suggested I bring it to this board for help and guidance.
The last thing we did was this:
I peformed a procedure to change the NoControl Panel value to 0 (zero). It was indeed set on 1 (one) After making the change I rebooted the machine and performed a few tests.
First I went back to the regedit file to confirm that the change I had made from the 1 to 0 had indeed occurred. It had.
I then went to see if I could access my Control Panel. Recall that since it has disappeared from my Start list and from the My Computer location, the only place I have been able to find it is in a listing of "Other Places" when I bring up the Printers and Faxes file. When I clicked on Conrol Panel I got that same message as before, to whit:
"This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator."
I then right clicked on my Internet Explorer Icon on my Desktop and then tried to select Properties. I got the same message.
I then decided to see if all the cleaning and purging that GreyKnight had me tod, had resolved my problem with getting access to Microsoft Updates, so I clicked on that and got the same message I had received before, to whit:
[Error number: 0x8DDD0003]
"Network policy settings prevent you from using this website to get updates for your computer. If you believe you have received this message in error, please contact your system administrator."
So I then "Googled: that error number which led me to this Microsoft site:
http://support.micro...spx?scid=326686
Where I found this article:
Article ID : 326686
Last Review : May 7, 2007
Revision : 9.2
The article describes procedures for restoring access to Microsoft Updates by making a Registry change and outlined a procedure which involved:
Start, Run, type gpedit.msc , then hit OK.
When I did this I received the following message:
"Windows cannot find ‘gpedit.msc’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, then try again. To search for a file click the Start button, and then click search."
So...ooooo, I've got the bad stuff out of my machine, (we believe), but I still have serious limitations and I still need help.
Thanks in advance,
66wreck