Help I think I have a virus

All
A pc for a friend has stopped opening programs from his startup menu and stopped running any executable program, can't scan his system as it wont run his norton executable file, even if I creat a new folder with new installed anti-virus it won't run, telling me the path is unknown or incorrect, it does this for everything except icons which were previously on his desktop.
Also when I open the internet it always jumps to one particluar webpage.
I think it's a virus but I don't know how to get around the exe files not running problem, can I boot from CD and run a clean up disk from there
Any help please

spyware

u gotta download spybot search and destroy - type it into google and u will find it.
also adaware free edition.

they will find the crap in your system

Re: spyware

Hi jabber,

pnr is right this looks like a spyware browser hijack. Take time to read the clean pc post at the top of this forum.

In recent months these have become nastier and more difficult to eliminate. Recently they are disabling the pc and making it impossible to down load the anti spyware software or even visit web pages that give sound information on how to solve your problem.

You might have to download the anti spy software on a clean machine and then load it to the infected machine.

Be very wary of any popups claiming to be able to rid you of spyware many of these are spyware themselves.

ajapale

thanks

All,
thanks for replying but the problem is, i have installed spybot on his pc but it is not seeing .exe files, so I can't run it, I've done a search and the files are there so i think it's just the virus telling the system they are hidden, it keeps stating for every .exe file that the file and path name are missing or incorrect, if you right click the properties of the file it's there but still won't run even if you find the file under windows search and double click it still tells you it can't find it, so there is no use loading files on the pc as it can't run .exe, also i've trieding running them from his d:/ and it still states the same, I did get to boot from a disk i have and run adaware 6.0 and Mcafee stinger and both found at least 300 trojans,diallers,spam and some virus's but still the same issue
any more ideas would be great

worm

cant run exes, sounds like a worm. try renaming the extension on the .exe youre trying to run to .com, long shot but seen it work.

if that works, go through the clean pc post. DO NOT rely on one piece of anti spyware to clean a pc. Use as many as it takes. Spybot is good but i guarantee you will find other spyware for practically every other piece of anti spyware s/w that you run. Clean as you go along.
Also, you could do worse then try symantecs online checker [broken link removed] theres others available but s about as good as any of them.

Re: worm

I have Nortons which I renewed in Sept. However a friend at work gave me a lend of his PestPatrol 2005 disk which I installed and it found 56 'pests' and 137 items of spyware and adware etc. says it will keep track 'invisably' of sites I surf and messages I send. Even though it was a 'lend' I notice that PestPatrol are treating it as a 32 day trial and no doubt I will be asked to pay a sub at the end of this period. If it is genuinely as good as it appears I probably will subscribe. There was an adware which I suspect came in with Kazaa which nortons detected every time but couldnt delete which this one appears to have nailed. It's apparantly designed for non-virus threats.Anyone else ever hear of this product and is it worth subscribing to (in addition to Norton)?

help

Just to let you all know
Eventually cleared it with a website
housecall.trendmicro.com, it found 27 infected files 26 where the usual rubbish, but the culprit was imbedded in the rundll32 file, deleted the file (with a bit of a nervous twitch, as it can crash the system), after this ran mcaffee stinger and finally as the browser was hijacked I ran Microsoft's Antispyware beta1
Although it's a microsoft product it's run very well and found over 200 versions of spyware and hijackers..
thanks for all the help