Lost administrator rights

Hi,

I have installed Avast Home edition in my home PC which has windows 2000 pro. I usually do not connect to internet at home and hence I have enabled only the standard shield for resident production. However, one day I connected to internet and Avast started throwing errors about some viruses and trojans. It has changed the desktop background as a html page with the message “Your system is infected”. At the same time, it has removed all the administrative rights though I logged in as administrator. I am not able to change the desktop background, not able to bring up the task manager etc. When I right click on the task bar, the task manager option is disabled. How do I get back the administrative rights for the administrator user?.

Thanks,
Balaji.

Hi It is not avast that has caused that you must be infected with other malware, ad-ware,
etc.

Because when I install avast nothing changes on any system I have ever installed avast on,so look at other things mentioned as well.

Loosing administrator rights is not caused by Avast, but by the malware that was (is?) on your system.

Using a account asuser with admin rights, is a high security risk.
Only do this when it is explicity needed to get things done.
When logged in as user with admin rights, the malware has the same rights as you!

To solve your problem, login as true administrator and not as user.
Reset the group/user policy settings.

To make sure your system really is clean, follow the instructions in the malware removal section on http://mrspock.dsmirc.co.uk

As Eddy said browsing whilst logged on as a user with administrator rights id a security risk as you hand the virus those administrator rights by default. So it can then create registry entries, put files in the system folders and as you have seen deny you administrator rights. So had you not been an admin rights user the impact would have been much reduced.

Once you have followed Eddy’s instructions, check out the DropMyRights link in my signature.

Is the webpage (http://mrspock.dsmirc.co.uk ) for those instructions missing now? Perhaps a new link? Thanks

Did you try the link, I just did and no problem loading?

The Malware removal page is still available using the link shown.