After W7 startup the Windows explorer starts spontaneously

Viruses and worms
1

Hi y’all.

Since a week or so I encountered a strange phenomenon.
Everytime I start my laptop (Lenovo U310, i5, W7 Home premium) the Windows explorer is started up spontaneously.

I visited several forums but none of them could help me getting rid of this nuisance.
Is there a procedure to locate and perhaps remove this?

Thanks in advance,
Jim

2

I suggest you use Autoruns to check if an entry opening explorer.exe is there.
If you have doubts and fear to do anything, post first a screenshot of it.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx
You need to run is as an admin. Take care.

3

Thanks Tech,

I ran Autoruns but couldn’t find any entry containing ‘explorer.exe’

4

Check out this post and topic as it seems to relate to the same issue, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=106861.msg852468#msg852468.

5

Thanks David.
papadiva, did you try searching winlogon and userinit.exe?

6

Hi, Tech, DavidR,

I’ve been looking for these strings too.
Autoruns didn’t find any of the kind, while I did find some lines in the registry containing winlogon/userint.exe, and it all seems very legal, no missing comma’s or whatsoever :slight_smile:

7

I followed DavidR’s advice and here are the results of the OTL-tool, in the attachments.
I hope this information will lead to the solution of this issue.

8

Hi

Im no malware expert, but analysing those logs i notice you have

Ad-Aware Antivirus
Avast

PRC - [2012-09-20 15:03:20 | 001,236,368 | ---- | M] (Lavasoft Limited) -- C:\Program Files (x86)\Ad-Aware Antivirus\AdAwareService.exe PRC - [2012-09-20 15:03:16 | 018,941,832 | ---- | M] (Lavasoft Limited) -- C:\Program Files (x86)\Ad-Aware Antivirus\AdAware.exe PRC - [2012-08-21 11:12:26 | 004,282,728 | ---- | M] (AVAST Software) -- C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\AvastUI.exe PRC - [2012-08-21 11:12:25 | 000,044,808 | ---- | M] (AVAST Software) -- C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\AvastSvc.exe

O4 - HKLM…\Run: [Ad-Aware Antivirus] C:\Program Files (x86)\Ad-Aware Antivirus\AdAwareLauncher.exe (Lavasoft Limited)

O4 - HKLM…\Run: [avast] C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\avastUI.exe (AVAST Software)

Running 2 Antivirus programs can cause loads of strange problems

I suggest you uninstall 1 of them :slight_smile:

Anthony

9

Hi adotd,

Yes, I delibirately installed Adaware because I was suspecting malware. I only use its ‘safe browsing filter’, nothing else.
Above that, the issue of explorer.exe started before I installed Adaware.

And when this problem is solved - which I sincerely hope - I will uninstall Adaware anyway :slight_smile:

Here is another result by aswMBR.exe