IE6: No launch, but iexplore.exe in task mgr?

Friend of mine in PA has an odd problem.

Earlier in the week, she said she got hit with Spy Shredder, so I sent her link for removal process. She never ran it, but this was like Monday or Tuesday.

She shut down her pc, Thursday nite, turned it on Friday and IE will not launch a window.

iexplore.exe shows in task manager as running. All other apps appear to work properly. Matter of fact, we can get two instances to show running in task manager, but no window appears anywhere.

HJT log run and checked, clean, same goes for start up list. Network connections at first would not even open, but has and says connected.

We've tried system restore, LGKC with no luck. Rootkits have been scanned for and nothing.

FF installed, does not load. Does show in Port Explorer as 'established' connection.

Event viewer log does not appear to show much, tho I still need to pick thru it better.

No firewall, XP SP2 only. I forget what AV she has on board.

Anyone have any ideas?

She's offline until later on tonite, currently awaiting her to run Trend Micro System Information Collector and send me the log.

Oh and she has not opened any odd emails at all either.

 

Process Explorer should show if iexplore.exe is loaded under another process as well as any dlls loaded under the iexplore.exe process.

 

Blender also suggested this, just before I posted here.

I'll add what transpires later on.

 

Have your friend select View>Lower Pane View>DLLs, then select the iexplore.exe process in the list. Once the lower pane populates, click File>Save As and save it where they can easily find it. That log will show you the dlls loaded under iexplore.

 

Well, after running all over looking at logs, I think what finally did it was installing the MSN WLM.

We changed a proxy setting which has baffled many users and mysteriously her shortcuts came back, and IE was able to open.

The latest 'forced' update has many users scrambling to find a fix, Blender actually had a similar problem, but due to her experience, had the thing working in no time. But her proxy settings were not changed, so likely a different issue.

I can't recall everything we did, but lord it seemed like we tried nearly everything.

 

Thanks Tom. If you get any more info on this bug, please link me.

 

Here is the Google search I did on one of the error codes she was getting:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...or+code+1603+++windows+live+messenger&spell=1

You can also PM\IM Blender to relate her story, which like I said was not like this one, but very odd and troubling that MSN could ***** this up this bad. Honestly I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it.

 

its an side effect from the virus
i went once into something like that
u get 2 instances if iexplore.exe once ur computer boots N u don c any explorer shells
i don recall how i removed it
but i'll c what i can do

 

I have the same problem but FF does load up, IE window loads after shutdown, but once you close window it does not open again. every time you double click IE icon, an instance appears in taskmgr, but no window opens. MSN WLM is not installed on PC, so I can rule that out. Any ideas? Using IE Tab in FF works, so I am confused.