Last Friday, my internet experience became unstable (sites would not load in
either Chrome or MSIE7; entering a good URL resulted in the URL's being
altered with spaces or odd characters added). This looked like a browser
hijacking, but after running SuperAntiSpyware in Safe Mode and deleting the
only serious threat it found, upon restart, Windows could not load a couple
Start-up programs ("Windows cannot find this program; please select from a
list or search online..." or words to that effect), I could no longer open
programs using my desktop shortcuts, and I could not get online. Most of my
quick-start icons had changed to generic file icons. I tried to do a System
Restore, but Windows could not find that program either. If I'd had more
patience and a second computer, I may have been able to resolve these
problems on my own, but.......
The threat SuperAntiSpyware found and removed was named "HKCR broken file
association" (HKEY_Classes_Root contains file name extension
associations...and is primarily intended for compatibility with the registry
in 16-bit Windows). Removing that "threat" didn't fix the instability; it
made it worse. You can find posts online where people complain about this
situation. Apparently, SuperAntiSpyware reports this Critical Threat, but
when people remove it, their file associations go missing. There are
"fixes" suggested for this apparently false-positive result, but I don't
trust the sources of the "fixes," so I haven't run any of them. I hired a
roving tech who ran a program that re-associated the files with their
programs, but he ended up simply doing a System Restore, because everything
else he tried didn't totally fix the problem. I re-ran SuperAntiSpyware
which found the so-called threat again, but I have NOT removed it, and my
computer is working just fine.
I also ran a new, updated copy of MalwareBytes which found no problems on c,
but it did find Trojan.AVKiller on my backup drive. Avast found no threats
on any drives.
Any thoughts on this HKCR broken file association that SuperAntiSpyware
reports as a Critical Threat?
By the way, I posted about this same issue a month ago ("Does antimalware
program fix or delete a key?"). One reply said: "It will not fix the
broken association it will delete it. From what your wrote(HKCR\.exe), there
is nothing to be concerned about because there is no file associated with
that ".exe"."
SB
WinXP,SP3
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/simplycomputers2
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