A couple of weeks ago I disabled my Anti Virus and Firewall software. Not the smartest move I've ever made. This weekend my machine was attacked by the 'something-or-other' worm and started corrupting data and system files.
I caught it in time with Norton (after a hasty re-install), but I got a message saying a file called System32 was damaged and could not be replaced.
My pc seems to be fine, so what is system32, and will it replace itself?
System32
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Gavin Scott
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In reality, system32 is the directory in which most of your core windows components are held.Gavin Scott wrote:A couple of weeks ago I disabled my Anti Virus and Firewall software. Not the smartest move I've ever made. This weekend my machine was attacked by the 'something-or-other' worm and started corrupting data and system files.
I caught it in time with Norton (after a hasty re-install), but I got a message saying a file called System32 was damaged and could not be replaced.
My pc seems to be fine, so what is system32, and will it replace itself?
Since it describes it as a file, I assume this is the alias that the virus was going under at the time. Exactly when does this message appear?
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Gavin Scott
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Yeesh - now you're asking. I don't know. It might not have said "file" as such.
When I started to install Norton, it told me that it would have to do a scan to see if anything was there which would interfere with installation. It came up with 86 corrupted/damaged files. Thoughout this process a Norton warning appeared dozens of times to tell me about system32.
I continued the installation, then ran a complete scan again. It then removed one file and quarantined two more. At the point where I rebooted (for the final time) a dialogue box came up and said that system32 had been damaged. I clicked "ok".
Everything continues to work as normal, and I havent rebooted since.
When I started to install Norton, it told me that it would have to do a scan to see if anything was there which would interfere with installation. It came up with 86 corrupted/damaged files. Thoughout this process a Norton warning appeared dozens of times to tell me about system32.
I continued the installation, then ran a complete scan again. It then removed one file and quarantined two more. At the point where I rebooted (for the final time) a dialogue box came up and said that system32 had been damaged. I clicked "ok".
Everything continues to work as normal, and I havent rebooted since.
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Dr Lobster*
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without seeing the error message, its quite difficult to diagnose the exact fault, but it seems as though the system32 folder has either damaged or missing files or the access control list (access rights, maybe for the system account) for the folder are corrupt.
my advice, if you feel that there still may be some virus activity or obscure behavour, it will generally be easier to do a complete clean install.
my advice, if you feel that there still may be some virus activity or obscure behavour, it will generally be easier to do a complete clean install.
I think I'm having the same sort of problems too but with a different file. Some of you may remember I encountered a few viruses in the last few months well despite clearing them, I think some spyware has got onto my computer and has ruined the ba$tard thing.
As soon as I boot up my PC, it will load up all my desktop icons but a system error window will come up saying there is an error on run32dll and when you look at the reason, it blames wininet.dll If I close that window down, all my desktop icons disapear including the ones on the desktop but the PC will continue to boot up and it will bring up the MSN window and if I bring up the task manager, it will have all the open files in there but after that, I have an unusable PC.
Before it was the run32dll, the wininet.dll problem was happening on anything connected to the internet and it if I got rid of those errors, it will shut down half a dozen programs but would continue to run. Although I would be unable to use I.E. but would happily use another browser.
I don't know what to do, hopefully somebody from work will come round to have a look but it looks like I might need to do a reinstall which should be fun as I don't have a CD-RW!
As soon as I boot up my PC, it will load up all my desktop icons but a system error window will come up saying there is an error on run32dll and when you look at the reason, it blames wininet.dll If I close that window down, all my desktop icons disapear including the ones on the desktop but the PC will continue to boot up and it will bring up the MSN window and if I bring up the task manager, it will have all the open files in there but after that, I have an unusable PC.
Before it was the run32dll, the wininet.dll problem was happening on anything connected to the internet and it if I got rid of those errors, it will shut down half a dozen programs but would continue to run. Although I would be unable to use I.E. but would happily use another browser.
I don't know what to do, hopefully somebody from work will come round to have a look but it looks like I might need to do a reinstall which should be fun as I don't have a CD-RW!
