Cannot run anything.

Hello all,

I've been looking for days for a fix for my problem and I can't find anything so I was hoping y'all could help.

My computer recently got a Rootkit (at least I think that's what it was) and I am pretty good at removing them myself so I ran Combofix, but it was still acting weird like my wireless internet going in and out and then even my LAN connection completely not working, so I decided I was long due a reformat anyway. Also note that this was moments after I installed Firefox 3.6. So I get out my Windows XP Pro disk, and it reformatted fine, but now every time I go to run anything at all I get this message:

"Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item."

I read this post:
http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Windows-can...le-t245278.html
But am having the same problems. I can't even run a .reg file or anything in the control panel... Does anyone out there know how to fix this?

Hello Jdnet and welcome to the forum!

This error message should not occur after a format. Windows should be in a "pristine state" at that point.
Exactly how did you go about doing this?

Sounds to me like you have an infected system

System specs would be helpful.

That's what I thought and thought I may have been just one of those things, so I tried it again and the same exact thing happened. I deleted all my partitions and set it to install on the "empty" hard drive. I did notice when I went to reformat it again to see if the would fix it there was 8MB of unpartitioned space that looked like it was apart from windows.

Here are my system specs:

# Processor: 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5470 (2MB L2 Cache,800MHz FSB)
# Hard Drive: 120GB SATA hard drive (5400RPM)
# Memory: 1GB RAM (PC5300, 667 MHz, DDR2 SDRAM) -- 4GB max memory
# Optical Drive: DVD+-R Double layer / DVD+-RW Drive (Blu-ray drive optional)
# Ports and Slots: Four USB 2.0, one FireWire 400 port, one ExpressCard slot, one S-Video, one VGA, one 8-in-1 card reader, headphone / line-out, microphone-in, modem, 10/100 Ethernet
# Wireless: WiFi (802.11a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.0
# Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS (128MB)
# Operating System: Windows XP Pro
# 6-cell 56WHr Li-Ion battery
# Dimensions: 14.12" x 10.59" x 1.65" (Width x Depth x Height)
# Weight: 6 ibs and 11.6 oz with 6-cell battery

I think that's what you're asking for. It's a Dell Vostro 1500. These are the specs from a site because when I click on properties of my computer it gives me the same error message. Also, I have reformatted before with this disk and it has worked fine. Thanks for looking into this for me.

If you formatted and installed Windows twice, I'd say, you have some hardware problem, or bad installation CD.

Some rootkits can access hardware firmware and damage it.

I've used this disk to reformat it before, but I tried to load it again and still nothing. I tried to repair it and still nothing so I have a generic XP disk with no drivers with a license left on it so I used it and it worked! I just had to go out looking for all of the drivers.

I'm not sure what was wrong with my original disk but it's not working with my computer at all. Maybe the rootkit damaged something. I'm not really sure. At any rate thanks for all of your help!
-Jdet

Good news