Please help

[jdrainville]

Please help! I have a virus of some sort that is acting particularly nasty. First, it removed all system restore points, except right after I got infected. It also has spawned several other .exes, like a.exe and msa.exe, each of which I have killed, but they don't seem to be acting like a typical a.exe or msa.exe infection. It has also hijacked all of my google searches. I can do a search, but clicking a result link sends me to a seemingly random site or alternate search result. And lastly, and most frustating is that Norton didn't find it, but still run and Spybot, Malware bytes, and even HJT will not run giving a "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access this file." whether I run it from the shortcut or the file directly. I have verified that I am in the administrator group and even logged in as administrator, or in safe mode as administrator, the same thin happens. This is an XP box running SP3, IE8 , and up to date security. Like I said, I have tried to run everything I can and don't know what to do next, please help!

[NonSuch]

We understand that you are having difficulty running certain programs, including HijackThis. However, in order for us to help you it is necessary that you provide us with a HijackThis log, and it is possible you may be able to trick the malware into letting you do this. First, download HijackThis to a clean computer, then rename it from HijackThis.exe to any other name you want, using an .exe extension, for example... YourLastName.exe. Once you have done that, burn it to a CD (preferable to using a flash drive that may easily become infected) then transfer the renamed file to the infected computer and run a scan, then start a new topic and include your HijackThis log.

Please follow the guideline at the link below to start a new topic and post your HijackThis log. If you are unable to create and post a HijackThis log, then your only option may be to reformat your computer and reinstall the operating system.

This topic is now closed. Please start a new topic by following the HijackThis Guideline posted here, just be certain to rename HijackThis: >Guideline for posting your HijackThis log<