Troubles with internet browser switching to Internet Explorer in Emergency Mode

phillee024

New Member
Greetings, I need some help. Of all the years I have been working with computers my kids have managed to frak up the homeschooling computer and I have no idea what to do for the first time. From what I gather while my son was doing a search for a project for school a pop-up came on saying your computer is infected with viruses please click ok to continue and he clicked ok even though he has been told a MILLION times not to click ok to click the little red box with the white X in it and it installed antivirus8 on the system. I am running windows vista with all updates and I ran AVG and STOPzilla. They both found a bunch of crap that got installed and successfully removed them all(I Think???) but the system is still defaulting to IE instead of Firefox and comes up with the screen that says that Internet Explorer is in emergency protected mode and no matter what I do to try to reset or return to using Firefox I keep coming up with the same screen. I've tried everything just short of a clean install and I really dont want to have to do this. Please if anyone has any idea's I could really use it and appreciate it.
 
Please note that all the software I am recommending in this thread is free. Some of these software programs also have paid versions but all of these programs can be downloaded installed and run for free.

Sorry to hear that happened. First of all I would say why don’t you restore the system from a backup. You should always have a backup because Windows is inherently unstable. The software below will allow you to make a backup to DVD blanks with compression of all data on a hard drive. It also allows you to make a boot disk to restore data later.

Macrium Reflect Free 4.2 build 2952
http://download.cnet.com/Macrium-Reflect-Free/3000-2242_4-10845728.html?tag=mncol;2

Secondly I would have a talk with your son about the fact that it’s a big bad world out there on the Internet. Explain that there’s a difference between going to known websites versus simply searching new sites from a search engine. Talk about what viruses, Trojans, worms and key loggers and the fact that Windows is an unstable open operating system.

Below are some links and how to remove antivirus8. It looks like you’re going to have to edit the registry manually. A way to do that is to go to start, run, type in “regedit”. After you delete the registry entries, reboot the system. Then you should be able to delete the associated files.

Whenever you have a suspect program you think is running on your computer, it’s a good idea to check what is running in memory against a baseline you should have made earlier. The way I do this is to boot up my computer, unplug my network wire, turn off all the programs that I can including the antivirus program. Then I do a CTRL ALT DLT to open the Windows task manager. Click on the process tab to see what’s running in memory. Click on the image name sub tab once or twice to get the list in alphabetical order. Impress the ALT PRINT SCREEN buttons at the same time to copy a picture of what’s running in memory to the clipboard. Then I paste that picture into Microsoft Word and print it.

Whenever you see something running in memory that isn’t on your reference list Google it. Pretty quickly bailed to see if it’s a process that is harmless or whether it’s some kind of virus.

Remove Antivirus8 malware:
http://www.2-spyware.com/remove-antivirus8.html

My two favorite anti-malware our programs are below:

SpywareBlaster 4.4
http://download.cnet.com/SpywareBlaster/3000-8022_4-10196637.html?tag=mncol;1


Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.6.2
http://download.cnet.com/Spybot-Search-amp-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10122137.html?tag=mncol;4


Below is my favorite free online scanner which you can run regardless of what antivirus program installed in your computer.

Free eurozone anti virus online scanner:
http://www.f-secure.com/en_EMEA-Labs/security-threats/tools/online-scanner/

Generally I recommend running a third-party firewall rather lets build in the Windows.

Agnitum Outpost Firewall Free 2009
http://download.cnet.com/Agnitum-Outpost-Firewall-Free/3000-10435_4-10913746.html?tag=mncol;1

Windows Vista should be on service pack three by now. There is a chance your system is only on service pack two. I think you can go to control panel, system, the general tab to see what service pack is installed.

Lastly I would recommend that you never ever use Internet Explorer. Use Firefox instead. Also I recommend not using Outlook express. Instead use Thunderbird

Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13
http://download.cnet.com/mozilla-firefox/?tag=mncol;6

Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1.7
http://download.cnet.com/Mozilla-Thunderbird/3000-2367_4-10213643.html?tag=mncol;2

I don’t recommend trying to remove Internet Explorer. Simply don’t use it. The main IE icon on most Windows desktops is actually an icon and therefore can’t be deleted. However you can make a folder like “don’t use” or some such thing and put Internet Explorer in there. Trying actually remove Internet Explorer is likely to break the box.
 
A similar situation?:
For some time I happily used Easybcd. One week ago I installed Easybcd 2. and initially it worked and I can boot Win7. After some playing with the easybcd menus my computer(Acer Laptop 2 years old) stops Booting completely. I only get after booting some text msgs on the screen, but NO operating system! (I even don't get the boot msg) What can I do, apart from taken the harddisk out and reformat it again???
PS:I joined this forum recently and I answerd the Welcome msg with similar words as stated above
 
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