MSCONFIG isn't working!

[Marshall22]

Various software companies are auto-installing ad software on my PC. I tried to turn on my firewall which I had disabled the service through MSCONFIG.exe. BlackICE wouldn't start so I typed tried to open MSCONFIG and it seems the window will open but only for 4 seconds then it closes automatically like some popup being canceled. What is causing this?! I can't access it so how can I reenable the blackice service? Anyone have any ideas?

 

[wolluf]

Don't know why msconfig not working - but you can run services.msc to configure services.

 

[shaner66]

If I were you I'd run a program like Ad-aware or something alone those lines.
Also run a virus scan from housecall.antivirus.com

 

[Marshall22]

But runing housecall.antivirus.com, turns out I had the worm.spybot.gen trojen/virus. However it couldn't clean it. It manifested itself as msconfig32.exe and msconfig45.exe. By downloading "Process Explorer" from Sysinternals (

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml)to

view what processes were running because msconfig and your services could not be reached while the virus was there, it quickly found the two msconfigs running and I terminated them. Once terminated, I deleted both files. No more virus. I reran the Housecalls virus scaner and it registered it was clean.

I want to thank you both for your input, it allowed me to clean this thing without purchasing any software, though I plan to keep my virus scaner up to date from now on. Thanks again! -Marshall

 

[AlphaWeltall]

I want to thank everyone in this thread too. I had a program called msconfig45.exe that was trying to access the Internet through my PC. Thanks to this thread and the information in it, I too was able to locate and delete the file.