Desktop wont complete loading

[kurtismonger]

I have user who has a laptop with XP on it. He complained it was getting a bit sluggish so I took a look at it and ran some scans.
First I found that there were 130+ instances of cmd.exe running in the task manager every time Windows was booted. I checked out the startup folder but didn't see anything that should be causing that.
Then I ran Spybot S&D which found about 120 different problems. I told it to clean them all up except for the windows things like updates, firewall etc. Upon reboot I get to the point where I select the user I want to login as and then I can see the desktop wallpaper, but it never gets any further. I can CTRL+ALT+Delete, but none of the icons or task bar load up.
I then tried to boot in safe mode and got a BSOD everytime.

 

[SirBlack]

Have you tried inserting the XP CD disk & selecting Boot with help from your disk or Command Prompt. Also Windows Repair, you'll lose all your updates but none of your files.

If you get back online, check out this site to see if it helps:

http://www.tuneupadvisor.com/fix-exe.aspx

Bob

 

[kurtismonger]

I did try the XP disk boot. I finally used the command prompt to connect to a thumb drive and install Kaspersky. It found piles of problems and after a couple of reboots to clear a few I got the desktop back. I can't tell which was the problem for sure. The most problematic remaining appears to be Trojan-Spy.Win32.Agent.kd infecting c:\windows\system32\mssync20.exe, although its still scanning.