Right then, my computer recently got infected with various spyware and to remove I ran Spybot Search and Destroy. Detected around 100 entries <gulp> but managed to remove around 80 straight away. The remaining 20, the program reported, needed a restart to remove. I duly rebooted and on login Spybot ran and removed the remaining entries. Brilliant, I thought and proceeded to carry on as normal.
Big mistake.
The next time I booted up the PC and clicked on my user ID to log in as normal, I'm met with the following error:
Title - "explorer.exe - Application Error"
Messagebody - "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005). Click on OK to terminate the application."
Oh dear.
So I click ok, and it appears again. I click it again and this time it disappears leaving just the (unclickable) login screen. I Ctrl-Alt-Delete and can get to task manager ok but if I do File, New Task and type explorer it just gives the same error.
I am able to run everything else from here, I can run iexplore successfully and through this both connect to the internet, and browse my hard disks. I can also run all programs as normal including anti virus software, spyware programs, and even my games. The workstation appears to have full functionality, other than explorer not running.
Looking through a few websites there was mention of wininet.dll being corrupted as a possible cause. Going on this, I downloaded a clean copy, replaced the one in my system32\dllcache with it, and rebooted. This, alas, made no difference and explorer.exe is still erroring.
Therefore has anybody got any ideas on how I can sort this problem out? At the end of the day I have the option of rebuilding the workstation as I can backup my data with no problems, but I'd like to avoid going through that whole rigmarole if possible
Many thanks for your time
Matt.
Edited by MattW, 17 October 2005 - 10:52 AM.