Windows XP forces a right click to start a program...

M

Masterfulks

New Member
On a friends computer he's done something so that you have to right click an applicatoin and select "start" to get it to run.

If you just double left click it goes to a "run as" option with a user id or administrator option. If you click ok the box closes and nothing happens.

I'm guessing he has done something to have it defaulting to "run as" instead of "start" when he double left clicks.

My searches haven't gotten me anywhere.....Any ideas on how to get it back so that he can just left click to run an application?
 
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Have him do a system restore back to a day when it was working correctly and see if that works.
 
Well he can't exactly do that because he's had this problem for probably a couple of years.

Software has been installed since then that we can't lose.

The good news is that I found the registry problem and fixed it by installing the registry keys again. I wish I could post the other site where I got the keys, but I found them on another computer.

Once they were installed it worked fine. He had a ton of "free" antivirus crap on there. I think he was clicking on those free popups that scan for viruses. He's not very computer literate so who knows.

It took awhile to clear all the crap off of there, but now it should be running ok.
 
It sounds like the computer is infected. 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
 
He already had both of those on there, and I took them off yesterday.

I stripped it down to ccleaner and avg. Avg didn't find any viruses. I could put the other stuff back on there and try again.

Could it be that he got rid of the infection, and just had to repair the registry?
 
There still could be hidden infections that malwarebytes can't clean or find. I would recommend reinstalling them and post the logs for me to look at. I also recommend keeping them installed and run malwarebytes every few days to keep the system clean. You also must update it on a daily basis as it don't auto update.
 
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