.EXE Files Requesting Programs To Open Them With

Hi, this is a matter of high urgency as my laptop may be potentially ruined;

Yesterday night I got hit by a Malware virus, it was nothing massively difficult to get rid of, everything worked fine once I'd gotten rid of the virus. However when I woke up the next day my computer started requesting that .exe files are to be opened by other pieces of software. For example, if I click on the iTunes shortcut it tells me that the "Application could not be found" so I found the original .exe file in my C: drive but when I opened it opens the screen that is usually displayed when an unrecognized file is open. I then have to go through my C: drive again to try and find the original .exe file which apparently opens up the original .exe file! It makes no sense, it's slowing down my computer and making really bloody difficult to use my laptop which is already difficult to use because my windows explorer software constantly crashes......



If anyone, anyone at all has had this problem or can help please tell me because I need to revise for my GSCEs and this is becoming a huge, huge inconvenience.

Many Thanks

Thomas Corbishley

 

The instance I saw of this problem involved entries in the registry for the Windows SHELL that added malware to the explorer.exe command invocation line such that their programs were called.



The best tool I've found recently that can clean up this junk is Malwarebytes. See the link below:



[url]http://www.malwarebytes.org/ [/url]



Download their free version, install it, and run it. You will be amazed by the amount of malware junk that it finds.



You can also try running an antivirus program, but malware typically disables those, so you should run the malwarebytes program first to clean up the registry.

 

Cheers for the advice - I'll give it a go, could I just ask if the is a solution to the .exe problem or to the "my windows explorer keeps crashing" problem?

 

The malware removal should solve the .exe general problem.



As to the more specific explorer problems, if the malware removal doesn't solve those, we have pinned post here for troubleshooting them.