"NobodyMan" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 18:48:06 -0700,
wrote:

-----Original Message-----
Hi All,

I am attempting to recover from a Spyware install. I've
removed the Spyware installation and most registry
entries, however, I couldn't remove the most important
one until the file was gone. To only way to remove the
software was to boot into DOS and delete the file from
there since the way it was being loaded was through the
WinLogon process.

The problem I have now is that even though the spyware
is gone, I can't remove the entry out of the registry,
because my system will no longer boot. In it's current
state, when the system boots, it looks for the spyware
file during the winlogon process, but since it can't find
it anymore, the winlogon process blue screens.

Before the spyware software was removed, I was unable to
delete the entry in the registry, since every time I
deleted the registry entry for the spyware, it would re-
enter itself. (It had a hook into the explorer.exe
process).

I am now trying to copy the registry from this system to
another one so that I can edit it and remove the corrupt
entry. I don't know what files the registry consists of,
so I was wondering if you could point me to the correct
files.

As an alternative, if any of you are aware of DOS tools
I can use to edit the registry, I would also be willing
to try that. Note that the entries in the registry for
the Spyware are preceeded by a null character, so regular
registry tools will not even see the entries. I had a
heck of a time figuring this out, since essentially the
spyware put a null character entry in front of the entire
WinLogon registry node. Normal registry tools use the
Win32 API, which ignores anything after a null
character. In other words, the entire WinLogon registry
node in this case.

At any rate, any suggestions to edit the registry in a
non Windows mode, or by copying it to another computer,
would be highly appreciated. My understanding is that
the spyware was a variation of the VX2 Better Internet
software. Nasty stuff to get rid of, or even find.

Your help is much appreciated!

Steve.
.


XP doesnt have DOS just a DOS prompt. You can also just
choose run from the start menu and enter regedit.

Better to say XP has a Command Prompt. DOS prompt implies you are
accessing MS-DOS via the command line - and as you noted, XP doesn't
have MS-DOS.


Did you ever wonder why WinXP cmd prompt mem command doesn't know that?

From a mem command using cmd: "MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area".