Programs not wanting to run

Hey everyone, my computer seems to have decided to stop running certain programs on me. It starts up fine, internet works fine and all that. Then norton popped up one time on me saying that it detected an infected file, wmplayer.exe, after some searching on this site i discovered its a virus, so then i cleaned it somehow, and then a couple days later my media player will play, but there is no sound, so i had enough and uninstalled it. But most recently, probably about the same time the norton warning started showing, my defragmenter had stopped working, it just goes all day saying it is still working on 0%. SO i try the scandisk, and it says that there is a running program and has tried to cancel the program 10 times and can not proceed. On top of all this, my adobe acrobat reader tries to open when downloading a pdf file, but when it is loading it closes at the XFA.afi script i think it is. I am also trying to include an hijackthis log with my post, but it won't let me open up my log with anything on my computer, i'll keep trying. Anyways, any help would be much appreciated. I'm running windows 98SE.
thanks
jordan

 

pimping_cowboy--You certainly have a bunch of problems. It would be good to think that all are due to one cause--corruption of the association of .exe files with the open command.
Can you download anything? If not can you get to another PC and download this to your PC and run it?
ExeFix08
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmbox/Reticulated/Toys.html
Try that first. If it does not help, we can try to help on each problem individually.
P.S. Sadly you were infected by the Download.ject trojan just before MS issued a Critical Patch to fix the vulnerability. When you get things back in order, you want to go to the Windows Update site and get all available Critical patches. (I am not aware that getting the patch now will clear up the problems you already have.)

 

Howdy, thanks for the starting help, i downloaded that, but it doesn't seem to have fixed anything, and i don't have a notepad to open up any txt which confuses me cause i did beforehand. Could someone elaborate on this download.ject trojan, like where it came from and what it does to my system. So anymore help would be much appreciated.
thanks
jordan

 

pimping_cowboy--Since you can access the internet, download, install and use NotePadLite to (hopefully) show us your HiJackThis log.
http://www.soft32.com/download_14313.html
I would not worry too much at this point about Download.ject since I do not think it has much to do with the problem about your programs not running. However here is some info
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/download_ject.mspx
The only reason I mentioned it is that detection of wmplayer.exe (in the wrong directory) is a sign of this Trojan.
I think you may have other, bigger, problems.

 

Ok, i lied, i rebooted my computer after the Exe.fix08 and did a scandisk, and then the defragmenting and they both completed and work. So thanks a lot for that, much appreciated. I downloaded the notepad, thanks for the link, and so here is my hijackthis log.
Logfile of HijackThis v1.97.7
Scan saved at 3:27:48 PM, on 7/7/04
Platform: Windows 98 SE (Win9x 4.10.2222A)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v6.00 SP1 (6.00.2800.1106)

Running processes:
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\KERNEL32.DLL
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MSGSRV32.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MPREXE.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\mmtask.tsk
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MSTASK.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\LOADQM.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\DDHELP.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\SPOOL32.EXE
C:\PROGRAM FILES\MSN MESSENGER\MSNMSGR.EXE
C:\MY DOCUMENTS\MY RECEIVED FILES\HIJACKTHIS.EXE

R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://www.hotmail.com/
R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Local Page =
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Local Page =
O2 - BHO: NAV Helper - {BDF3E430-B101-42AD-A544-FADC6B084872} - C:\Program Files\Norton AntiVirus\NavShExt.dll
O2 - BHO: (no name) - {06849E9F-C8D7-4D59-B87D-784B7D6BE0B3} - C:\PROGRAM FILES\ADOBE\ACROBAT 6.0\READER\ACTIVEX\ACROIEHELPER.DLL
O3 - Toolbar: Norton AntiVirus - {42CDD1BF-3FFB-4238-8AD1-7859DF00B1D6} - C:\Program Files\Norton AntiVirus\NavShExt.dll
O3 - Toolbar: &Radio - {8E718888-423F-11D2-876E-00A0C9082467} - C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MSDXM.OCX
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [LoadQM] loadqm.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [WMPLAYER] C:\PROGRAM FILES\WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER\WMPLAYER.exe -invisible
O4 - HKLM\..\RunServices: [SchedulingAgent] mstask.exe
O4 - Startup: NkVwMon.exe.lnk = C:\Program Files\Nikon\NkView4\NkVwMon.exe
O8 - Extra context menu item: E&xport to Microsoft Excel - res://C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\OFFICE10\EXCEL.EXE/3000
O9 - Extra button: ICQ Pro (HKLM)
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: ICQ (HKLM)
O16 - DPF: {9F1C11AA-197B-4942-BA54-47A8489BB47F} (Update Class) - http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/CAB/x86/ansi/iuctl.CAB?37923.7378356481
O16 - DPF: {D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000} (Shockwave Flash Object) - http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab
O16 - DPF: {2FC9A21E-2069-4E47-8235-36318989DB13} (PPSDKActiveXScanner.MainScreen) - http://www.pestscan.com/scanner/axscanner.cab
O16 - DPF: {7B297BFD-85E4-4092-B2AF-16A91B2EA103} (WScanCtl Class) - http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/webscan.cab
O16 - DPF: {917623D1-D8E5-11D2-BE8B-00104B06BDE3} (CamImage Class) - http://cams.aacb.com//AxisCamControl.ocx

My adobe still only loads to XFA.api. . and my messenger shuts down when someone tries to text me or if someone signs in, weird. I'm more concerned about the adobe, i've tried uninstalling and installing, but that doesn't work. As well, i uninstalled my wm9 and reinstalled it and it works like normal. Thanks for the help so far welshjim
jordan

 

pimping_cowboy--Glad to hear of the progress.
I am no expert on HiJackThis logs but yours looks OK to me. (The wmplayer.exe you show is in the right place.)
Note, however, you are using an old version of HJT. New version (1.58.0) here
http://radiosplace.com
Can't help with Messenger. Never did like it so have no experience getting to run. You sure it is not disabled? Outlook Express Tools|Options|General tab.
As far as Adobe is concerned. I find I can run .pdf file much more smoothly if I download (Save) the .pdf file to my Hard Drive and then open it from my PC rather than the web. You need ActiveX controls to run to open .pdf files directly from the web. Also I disable my antivirus while I open .pdf files, even from my PC.
And you are sure you are downloading a version of Reader that is compatible with your version of Windows? When you go to www.adobe.com, click on the Reader download icon it should lead through a sequence to be sure you get the right version. Do not just go for the latest. And finally are you properly uninstalling the version of Reader you have on your PC (not Delete, probably use Control Panel|Add/Remove) before you reinstall?
Also you could try ar-speedup.zip. See the second post here
http://blogs.msdn.com/omars/archive/2004/04/29/123239.aspx
How is your old Notepad doing?