darlodge

My sister rang this morning and said that her PC will not work. PC turned on and displayed desktop image but would not display usual desktop icons. Also, taskbar, start menu were all missing.

I tried to run Explorer but it never came up, same thing happened regardless of different accounts on the machine (I had to create some using mmc)

Anyway, I finally managed to solve the problem. There was a service called wininit32.exe that was running. Thought it looked a bit odd, stopped it and then ran explorer. Worked. After restarting the machine the same thing happened, no desktop, no icons.

I ran a full on line virus scan from Trend and then ran a spy check, both nothing.

I then looked in the registry and found about 20 entries for wininit32.exe, mostly in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURR ENTVERSION\RUNONCE, RUN AND RUNSERVICE. Deleted all references to wininit32.exe and then searched on the local machine for wininit32.exe. Found 2 versions. One in C:\windows\system and one in a directory called prefab or something like it. Deleted both files and then restarted the machine again.

Now all working

Just thought I'd share my experience as for once there are no helpful articles on google

Darren

darlodge

Actually looking further, I noticed a document that describes this as WORM_PETIK.E

I thought I'd found a new virus. I was just about to name it

Darren