Can't get into any programs.

[Fighter]

Yesterday i tried to get into zsnes emulator, then when I opened it it came up with this message: Windows cannot access the specified device, path. or file. You may not have the appropiate permissions to access the item. This also happened when I tried to get into Word, paint, scanner, photostudio, infact almost EVERYTHING and the same message came up. I scanned the entire computer with PC-cillin Real-time Scan (I can't get into Norton Antivirus) and no viruses were found. What does it mean and how can I re-access the programs?

[CloudDragon]

I'm not sure, if its not a virus, it may be spyware. I suggest you may want to download Ad-Aware. It removes all spyware from the computer, that could be the problem, I'm not entirely sure though.

[crono_logical]

Need to tell us which version of windows you're using - if it's an NT based one, sounds like permissions got screwed in the current uer account.

Saying how many hard drives and what partitions you have (or how the data/programs are seperated out) might help too, could be a disk failure or imminent one of one drive.

[Fighter]

I have windows XP home edition and have: Local Disc C: which is the hard drive, CD Drive D:, and 3 1/2 Floppy A:. I also have shared documents. I'm not sure if that's what you meant by partitions, Guu. I've done full virus scan twice on the entire computer and no viruses were found.

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the problem, but today I was sent a weird message that was sent straight to my desktop. Something about getting rid of hackers. Is it possible to send files like that directly to your desktop without it appearing in your inbox? Thanks for all the help, guys .

[Emotion Sickness]

well, you could try.. backing up all the files that you need, and reformating, but thats only if theres no other option

[crono_logical]

Is that text file what you got on your desktop? From what's in the text file, it may be a variant of the following worm, which actually is able to block/disable normal virus scanning tools, to make it harder to detect.

http://vil.mcafee.com/dispVirus.asp?virus_k=99933

Althouh from your previous post, where it talks about you can't run any executables, it may seem your virus scanner has half cleaned it, but not perfectly, because the virus changes the registry to make everyting run through itself - if the virus is deleted without fixing the registry, then lots of things will refuse to run because everything will try to run through the virus and fail, because the virus exe is not found, hence your "file not found" errors.

Theres a link on the page somewhere towards the bottom with a seperate removal tool - whether it works or not is another question since you seem to have a variant or newer version of that particular virus, but that's closest match there is so far. If it fails, you'll have to delete and reinstall Windows (I shouldn't think a full reformat necessary from what it does).



As for it without appearing in your inbox, if you haven't patched Outlook (assuming that's what you use), it's possible that it auroran itself to display that message then deleted the copy in the inbox.



EDIT: I just noticed that that particular worm is currently a medium risk on the site's front page, and it's fairly recent too, so it seems more likely now that that's what's infected your PC

[Fighter]

I called the company that made my computerand I had to completely reinstall windows again to get rid of the problem. Nowverything is back to normal and all the progarams are running fine. Thanks for all your help, it is very much appreciated.

[crono_logical]

That was fun, I just got that very same virus on my brother's PC 10 minutes ago, and had to remove it myself. You should have followed that link I gave earlier, it has a program on there to remove that virus - much faster than getting the whole OS replaced