Problem with winlogon.exe

[_Lynn_]

Hi everyone,
Whenever I start my laptop I would receive a windows error "winlogon.exe encountered a problem and needs to close" within a few seconds, and a few seconds after the error pops up my desktop theme would somehow revert to the old Windows 98 style, and would restart within a few seconds. A blue screen pops up very briefly as well before restarting, but too short for me to see the exact error message.
The only "change" I made to the computer today was download and install a program known as "file extension renamer", which renames the extensions of multiple files at once. It was downloaded from brothersoft, which should be safe but I'm not sure anymore.
I tried booting in safe mode but within seconds of clicking my account icon to log in, the computer would restart itself as well, but with no pop-up error in safe mode.
Is there any way to fix this error besides reformating C drive? =/
Thanks.

OS: Windows XP Service Pack 3

 

[linkin]

If you have an install cd you can do a repair install of windows. this repairs missing or corrupt windows files.

 

[johnb35]

You are most likely infected by installing a rogue program, please do the following.

Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware from here or here and save it to your desktop.

• Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
• At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to
  • Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
  • and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
• then click Finish.
• If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version. Please keep updating until it says you have the latest version.
• Once the program has loaded, select Perform quick scan, then click Scan.
• When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
• Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.
• A log will be saved automatically which you can access by clicking on the Logs tab within Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

Download the HijackThis installer from here.
Run the installer and choose Install, indicating that you accept the licence agreement. The installer will place a shortcut on your desktop and launch HijackThis.

Click Do a system scan and save a logfile

Most of what HijackThis lists will be harmless or even essential, don't fix anything yet.

Post the logfile that HijackThis produces along with the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware log

 

[_Lynn_]

You are most likely infected by installing a rogue program, please do the following.

Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware from here or here and save it to your desktop.

• Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
• At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to
  • Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
  • and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
• then click Finish.
• If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version. Please keep updating until it says you have the latest version.
• Once the program has loaded, select Perform quick scan, then click Scan.
• When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
• Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.
• A log will be saved automatically which you can access by clicking on the Logs tab within Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

Download the HijackThis installer from here.
Run the installer and choose Install, indicating that you accept the licence agreement. The installer will place a shortcut on your desktop and launch HijackThis.

Click Do a system scan and save a logfile

Most of what HijackThis lists will be harmless or even essential, don't fix anything yet.

Post the logfile that HijackThis produces along with the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware log

The laptop restarts within 10 seconds of logging in...
There's no way I can download it and run it within 10 seconds.
Safe mode restarts within seconds as well as mentioned in my post.

 

[johnb35]

Most likely you will need to take the hard drive out of the system and put it in another system that has a fully updated antivirus program and scan the drive that way.