[saint_bane]

Long story short, I had installed a trial version of CA anti virus, but many problems ensued thereafter. Hence attempted uninstalling and that did not work. Hence, I attempted the long method of cleaning up the registry and the associated files in the system32. one file in particular that needed to be deleted upon reboot is Vetredir.dll (as per many forms that suggested this!). Indeed this file had the CA company logo on it. and I used HiJack to remove it upon reboot.

Now, everything went to hell. When XP reboot it does not load up the Desktop after entering the user name and password. I know the PC is not hung up because I can call the task manager. But as soon as I try to issue any command, nothing happens!

Tried to reboot on Safe Mode, and I surely get farther. I can load my desktop but still cannot open any files... in fact it seems that Windows is unable to locate any file when navigating with its GUI.

My question is: can I back up all my info using USB external drive from Safe Mode Command Prompt? If yes please assist. What are the commands to use to enable USB Flash in Safe Mode? After backing up all my info, I plan to reformat the PC....

Thanks all in advance!

[Saga Lout]

Originally Posted by saint_bane

My question is: can I back up all my info using USB external drive from Safe Mode Command Prompt? If yes please assist. What are the commands to use to enable USB Flash in Safe Mode? After backing up all my info, I plan to reformat the PC....

Thanks all in advance!

If you can boot into Safe Mode (no Command Prompt necessary) you can simply copy or cut and paste files from the GUI into the flash drive which should show up in My Computer.

[saint_bane]

Hey Saga Lout,
thanks for taking the time to reply.... the thing is I am unable to open any folders or files (including my computer folder). When attempting to open it, I see the "microphone" symbol turning trying to locate the folder to open it but to no avail.

It seems that no folder or file are able to be opened correctly any more. (Even administrative services and Control Panel folder-- nothing can be displayed or opened)
The only advantage that Safe Mode give me is the ability to see a task bar and my items of Desktop (even though I still cannot open any of them! )

One thing I tried to do is to navigate the different folders using a browser (CHROME in this case), which incidentally worked! but the problem remains that when attempting to open, nothing seems to function.... at this stage I want simply to manually enable USB from CMD and XCOPY all prior to a reformat... I am still not sure how to do that

[raybro]

I recently removed CA Internet Security from my daughter's father-in-law's eMachine using Revo Uninstaller (the ONLY way to remove a program). There were over 4000 registry entries and 700 files. That program really embeds itself in your computer. Removing it manually would be an arduous and dangerous task. CA makes even Symantec look tame. The degree to which CA hogged resources stretches imagination. He had 512GB of RAM installed, so I installed another 512Gb. It made no difference what ever in the way the computer performed (which was very snail like).

I know none of this is of any help with your problem, so my recommendation is to do a repair install of your OS. Click here to learn how. A repair install will renew all your system files while leaving your programs and files intact. Having said that, it is always a good idea to backup your files before doing anything like this. You will have to download/install all windows updates (again) after this process.

BTW... If you want to use Revo Uninstaller to uninstall CA, you would need to reinstall CA first. Then Revo will get it all out.

EDIT... Sorry, forgot you can't access your files. Good luck with the repair install should you elect to use it. It's reasonably safe, but there are never any guarantees.

Raybro

[itsjusme]

A simple way to back up the files and data you want to save is using one of the Linux Live cd`s. I suggest PUPPY LINUX , it is a great little os and recovery tool. Download the .iso file and burn it as a disk image to make it bootable. Once you get it booted you should be able to mount/open the partitions on your hard drive and copy the data to usb. You can also take the disk out once puppy boots and free up your optical drive for recovery of data, puppy loads into and runs from ram. Once you get your data backed up , if you can boot into safe mode, try running system restore to a point before you installed CA. Your registry may be corrupt and it may not work, but it wont hurt to try that before you do a repair/reinstall. BACKUP first.

[Saga Lout]

Is it possible for you to open the Task Manager using Control Shift Escape together and form the File>New Task menu, to use the Browse facility to backdoor into Explorer? Then you might be able to get to c\windows\rstrui.exe and go back to the day before all this started. You could also possibly transfer files out by flash drive.

[saint_bane]

Great suggestion about the PUPPY Linux. I got the image and burned it at a friends' place yesterday. The CD allowed me to access all the information on the hard drive and backups with external flash! GREAT HELP!!
Now at least I can attempt other venues to repair the OS and worse case reformat with peace that I got at least my data back.

[itsjusme]

Glad to hear you got your data backed up. If this is really important data that you need, i suggest copying it from the flash drive and burning a hard copy to dvd, or maybe backing it up to a folder/partition on another computer. Flash drives are a wonderful thing and usually pretty reliable. BUT, they are easily lost, easily corrupted, easily damaged, easily eaten by a pet(or chewed up till they wont work) . LOL That way you`ll have two copies for safety sake. Run system restore back to a time before you installed CA and see if that will get you going.

[Saga Lout]

Originally Posted by saint_bane

Now at least I can attempt other venues to repair the OS and worse case reformat with peace that I got at least my data back.

Now it doesn't matter quite so much, maybe there's something useful for you at http://www.dougknox.com in his XP Fixes>File Association Fixes - particularly the exe fix.