possible virus?

[rudder]

okay I I was doing this over the phone with my bro in law who is not the most computer savy person. I am trying to see if this is a possible virus. The symptoms are that windows XP boot up, but the OS then take the appearance of a highly locked down machine. The only thing that is accessible is IE. Its a standalone machine so there are no group policies locking it down.

The install service is no unavailable so he cant even install anything. I tried to tell him to goto a web based scanner, but he cannot even update java for those to work.


Just wonderin if anyone hase experienced a virus with similar characteristics.

 

[mechBgon]

Have him try this command-line scanner, which needs no installation: http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/scan.txt <--- instructions, follow precisely.

Another thought, it's possible that a virus could switch his user account to a Limited account. A simple test would be to try to create a new text file in the C:\Windows directory. A Limited (non-Administrator-class) account cannot do that. If that's what has happened, then back up his data and nuke the whole Windows installation.

 

[BadThad]

Did he try safe mode?

 

[rudder]

safe mode boots up, but same result. I will have him try the scanner as well.