Win98 opens C:\Windows on boot?

Web junkie · **Win98 opens C:\Windows on boot? -** 06-24-2005, 17:42 | posts: 369

A Neighbours Win 98 PC has started opening the C:\WINDOWS folder on the desktop each time she boots up her PC.

I've checked the RUN entries in registry, both HKLM and HKCU, searched for occurances of C:\Windows and all deal with where windows is installed like WinDir= etc, nothing unusual I can see. Checked the Startup folder, nothing obvious, ran MSCONFIG and still can't see anything obvious.

Any ideas why this is happening?

06-24-2005, 17:56 | posts: n/a

this can happen when one of the startup files are actually missing

check and make sure that the files themselves are there

SorienOR · 06-24-2005, 19:59 | posts: 6,454 | Location: Oregon

did you try totally disabling all startup items? mabye some other program is doing it. Plus the standard virus/spyware scans.

Web junkie · 06-24-2005, 21:41 | posts: 369

I updated Norton AV to latest definitions and installed Ad-Aware Personal SE 1.06 and found quite a bit of spyware which I removed and a trojan on a file which I quarantined with Norton AV, but it still does the same thing regardless.

Will try the looking at the startup files, not sure when as she's busy most nights so i'll have to arrange it with her!

I'll keep you posted

Animatrix · 06-24-2005, 22:07 | posts: 6,852 | Location: Denmark

Some more tools. You can post a HijackThis log here as well if you need help on it.

StartupList
http://computercops.biz/zx/Merijn/startuplist.zip

HijackThis
http://www.merijn.org/files/hijackthis.zip

Spybot Search & Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org

CCleaner
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Regmon
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Regmon.html

Morpheous416 · 06-26-2005, 15:03 | posts: 3,525 | Location: U.S.A.

Those OSes up to 2000, would boot back to the last known desktop configuration when the system was shut down. So, if you had a window open when you restarted the system, or on a network folder, the system would try to get you back to where you were when you had to restart...which when installing drivers and such, was a good thing!

Though, the "fix" was to make sure nothing was running when you shut the system down. If that's already been tried, then it just might be some registry setting that's recalling that window from Explorer when the system is starting...and there are many other 'startup' entry keys in the registry other than your typical "RUN" keys.

bakuryu · 06-26-2005, 16:14 | posts: 3,270 | Location: India

Yeah!! as Morpheous416 said there are many locations....and manually searching them is very boring!!

So i use Autoruns

Quote:

This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor (A starting list of auto-run locations was obtained from David Solomon's "Windows Internals" seminar), shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more.

Download Autoruns