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One possible cause of this error is a rootkit virus. I recently had a customer who had this error, along with other symptoms like a hijacked browser and a pop up window that would shut down the PC after about 5 - 10 minutes of use.

Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware did not find any spyware, even after doing a full scan. I checked msconfig, regedit, and HijackThis -- all turned up clean.

I decided to run ComboFix and it turned up a rootkit virus that had infected atapi.sys. Once Combofix disinfected the file the problems were resolved.

http://www.combofix.org/download.php

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Here's yet another malware program masquerading as anti-virus software. Internet Security 2010 gives the appearance of a bona fide virus clean up program. It comes with a fake screen of virus infections that are designed to scare you into buying their software. Don't be fooled!

This software is kind of devious in that it disables the task manager and also redefines Run > CMD so that you can't get to the DOS prompt.

Here's what I did to clean it up.

1) Make sure you have a current backup of any important files. Pictures, documents, music, etc.

2) Boot into Safe mode. Press F8 during power up and then choose Safe Mode with Networking.

3) Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Hijackthis.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/
http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/

4) Install and run Malwarebytes. Make sure you do an update first and then do a Quick Scan. This will remove the majority of the virus.

5) Install and Run Hijackthis. Look for references to windowsupdate86 and IS2010 and remove them.

6) Reboot your computer into Safe Mode again.

7) Run msconfig and remove any references to IS2010 or Internet Security 2010.

8) Open your Windows Explorer and manually remove the folder c:\program files\internet security 2010 or c:\program files\IS2010.

9) Run Regedit and do a search for Internet Security 2010. Remove any references.

10) Reboot to Safe Mode again.

11) Run Malwarebytes again doing a FULL scan.

At this point your system should be clean.

In the future, make sure you are running Firefox rather than IE.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

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This is another very annoying malware popup that pretends to be a virus scanner, giving fake scanning statistics and virus detection.

The other side effects you may encounter from this malware is that you cannot access regedit or access your computer properties menu.

You'll need two programs to remove this malware:

HijackThis - http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/
Malwarebytes Anti Malware - http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

1) Download and install the two programs.

2) Boot into safe mode (press F8 during power up) and run Malware's Anti Malware program. Do an update and then a full scan.

3) Once that is completed, run Hijackthis and remove any references to plugie.dll, svchast.exe, svchasts.exe.

Boot into normal mode and the malware should be removed.

You can also find supplemental removal information at this link:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-windows-police-pro

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This recently happened to one of my customers. She was unable to open various websites -- mostly those with https since it was reporting a certification error. After tweaking and fumbling with a lot of the security settings, I noticed that for some reason the date and time were way off on her PC.

Once I corrected the date and time, all the cert errors went away!

Sometimes the solutions are too easy...

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Changing or adding a file association is usually a pretty simple process in XP. If you right-click on the file you want to open and then select Choose Program, you can pick which program you want to use to open the file.

Recently I ran into a problem with adding a new application for a file association. The customer recently installed Photoshop CS4 and wanted to remove the old Photoshop 7.0 from her XP system. Simply enough: Just uninstall Photoshop 7.0 from the Add / Remove Programs icon under the Control Panel.

However, when trying to associate JPGs and JPEGs to open with the new Photoshop CS4, XP did not allow it to be added to the file list. Even selecting the full c:\program files\adobe\adobe photoshop cs4\photoshop.exe did not add the application to the program list.

The answer is that the Adobe Photoshop 7.0 does not do a clean uninstall. I needed to navigate to the registry key

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\APPLICATIONS\PHOTOSHOP.EXE\SHELL\EDIT\COMMAND and change the path to the new Photoshop CS4.

After making that registry change XP allowed the new CS4 to be added to the Open With application list.

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If you have a legitimate installation of Microsoft Office Professional 2003 and need a replacement disk, you can try calling the support number here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302822

Press 0 to get an operator and they will help you.

Note: If you have an OEM version installed then you'll need to contact your original dealer. The way you can tell if you have an OEM version installed is by going to the Help > About and checking the product ID. If there are any letters in the ID then you have an OEM version.

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There's been a lot of national news lately regarding the Conficker Worm. I did some research and found a nice Conficker removal tool at BitDefender's site.

http://www.bdtools.net/how-to-remove-downadup.php

Pretty easy to run. Just unzip the download into a folder and run the gui program. At least you get a little peace of mind...

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If you ever get the dreaded "Missing or Corrupt Windows System32" error message then this set of instructions from the Microsoft site can be of great help in getting your registry and other system files restored.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

The gist of the instructions is to show how to get your XP system to minimally boot so that you can manually get to one of the restore points.

I tried it and the instructions generally work. However, if you run into a lot of access denied problems then you may need to reset the file permissions so that you are the new owner. You can do this by right-clicking on the file or folder and then selecting the security tab to add the new owner name.

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Just thought I'd keep a note of this site: http://www.nirsoft.net/

Some very useful system utilities and password recovery programs.

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