Ok, wtf is going on ... my regedit suddenly stopped working! I type "regedit" into the run prompt and I get an error!! Obviously this program is an integral part of WinXP made FOR WinXP and now it wont work?? HOW is that possible?! All hell is breaking loose in my comp, i think ... Here's what it says, as follows. The window is titled "16 bit MS-DOS Subsystem." The text in the box says: "J:\WINDOWS\System32\regedit.com J:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application." And it has Close and Ignore buttons. Either way it just terminates. I discovered this while trying to manually remove a VICIOUS infestation of spyware that I somehow acquired recently. I have this thing called YourSiteBar sitting in my comp right now, but I may have more than one. Basically I've tried adaware and spybot and they dont work: all the files just reinstall themselves after reboot no matter how many times I try to delete them with either of those spyware checkers. Using Add/remove to manually take it out doesn't work either; it comes back upon reboot. So i searched online and found a site telling me how to manually exorcise my system, and part of the process is, of course, deleting registry keys. So I was following the instructions and then BAM ... regedit doesn't work. Could this spyware really be screwing up my system that badly? Or is this a virus? But I found nothing when I scanned with my antivirus (although it is an outdated 2002 pc-cillin for which I can't get updated virus definitions anymore). This is #$*!%^& scary! Looks like I'm in really really deep s**t here if something as vital as regedit terminates with an error message ... Any suggestions? lol
Instead of typing regedit type regedt32 and see if that helps! Also check out HijackTHIS , it has never failed me in the past on removing unwanted toolbars! Also if you decide to use HijackTHIS go HERE and paste your log file in the text box and it will analyse it for you!
Update: Ok nevermind lol. I guess I was a bit hasty to post this. After struggling with it for like another hour or two, I finally got it cleared up. It was indeed the spyware that was preventing regedit from working! Or at least it very much appears so because now that it's finally gone, regedit works again. Very vicious, isn't it? Basically what I did is go into program files folder and deleted all the folders I found that I hadn't seen there before (there were like 4). Then I ran adaware, then spybot again. Finally I downloaded XoftSpy and ran that too. Xoftspy found like at least 10 items (a couple executables and a bunch of registry keys/values) which neither adaware nor spybot saw. Interestingly, however, I thought that XoftSpy was another free program like spybot, but turns out that it only goes so far as to locate all the spyware, not actually remove it. Once you hit "remove," you are taken to the purchase page. I didn't wanna buy it so I just deleted the files and registry values showing in the scan results window manually (regedit was back to working by then), since it showed the location for every file/registry item. Then i finally rebooted and this time nothing reinstalled itself! Spybot still says I'm clean. Only thing is (if anyone wants to help with this small left-over problem) I didn't clean out everything because it shows the path in the registry only partially. I got the executables, which were the most important, and all the registry values but none of the registry keys (minimal threat). It says, for example, "software\classes\runmsc.loader\curver" as the location for one of the registry keys. But I can't find it cuz this isn't exactly the complete path starting from the very top. And Find isn't really helping either cuz there are a ton of folders called "CurVer." Thanks for the links though, Pelvis.
