Initially, I had posted on Internet & Networking Forum, but I believe I still may be infected. I thought that the only thing that was wrong was IE not opening, but there appears to be a larger problem.
I'm using Windows XP Home Edition and have Avast Antivirus on it. Initally, the computer became infected with XP Antivirus 2010, which I tried to remove with Malwarebyte but was unable to properly install Malwarebyte. I attempted to try this numerous times, but the actual .exe file wasn't included in the download. I wasn't able to run any .exe file and therefore was going to try to rename it to a .com file but the actual program wouldn't download at all (I was using another cpu to download the setup and then put it on my cpu). Thus, I did a system restore and was able to properly download Malwarebyte and remove the infected files (ran numerous full scans with both Avast and Malwarebytes). After this, i had a problem with exe file associations (nothing would open) and was able to fix this with exefix.reg.
Now, everything is running properly on my computer except for Internet Explorer (I must honestly admit that I am far from aware if everything is working correctly). My computer is able to connect to the internet (Avast is running and I'm able to download Windows updates), but when I launch Internet Explorer it opens for a second (quick flash) and then immediately closes. I've tried to reset the internet settings and uncheck the "enable third-party browser extensions" box, but none of this worked. I had recently updated to IE8 (one of the windows updates after the system restore), so I tried to uninstall IE8 but I had the same problems with IE7. I then tried reinstalling IE8 but it was no help. Please let me know if there is a solution for my problem.
I then posted this (I simply want to include any relevant/helpful info) on the Internet & Networking Forum after being advised to try IEFix:
"I tried the IEFix but it didn't work. To give you the full details, when I first tried to run IEFix, I followed the prompt as shown on the link you provided. I found the link for C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386, but then a few more prompts followed that I found that correct paths for. These other prompts asked for the locations of 'mswrd632.wpc', INSTALL.INS, & IEINFO5.OCX. I found the locations of these 3 files and provided them, but at the end of install I received an error message: "RUNDLL, Error in iesetup.dll Missing entry: IEAccessSysInst"."
Please let me know if you have any advice, as it appears my cpu may still be infected.