Virus????

[wnied]

Long story short my cousins computer tries to open every executable program with WINZIP. What command could I use manually to change .exe association in DOS so he can go about using the computer, and begin the task of wiping this bug from his drive? I've looked online to find the bug, but all searches for .zip or winzip viruses comes up NIL.

Any and all help is appreciated.
wnied

 

[KB]

He dos command he needs is:

format C: /u /s

since exe files are associated with Winzip he won't be able to run regedit to change it.

 

[ianbergman]

format might not be necessary here 🙂. what would be easiest is if you could find out what kind of virus it is - get a disk or cd-based virus scanner and scan the drive. sounds like one of last year's breeds, so you don't necessarily need an up-to-date piece of software. then you can get detailed removal instructions.

in the meanwhile, however, regedit can be run as a .com file, so you should be able to run it. you need to do this:

go to a command prompt in the regedit folder (c:\windows, usually)
type "copy regedit.exe regedit.com"
go to the "run" command in the start menu and type "regedit.com"
expand hkey_classes_root
find and highlight ".exe"
where it says "(default)" on the right, double click and make sure that the value is "exefile"
scroll down to "exefile"
make sure the data value is "Application"

now install a good virus scanner and get rid of the thing. and update the virus scanner 🙂.

 

[Cuular]

Or it may just be a bad choice from when he was using winzip. If winzip fires up everytime you try using another program, go into the options on there and search for the extensions that it supports. He probably inadvertently pressed the select all button for what types of extensions winzip will handle. Select just the .zip extensions from the list winzip gives you and see if that fixes it.

 

[ianbergman]

oops, didn't even think of that. Winzip will let you associate EXEs with it? scary.