I did not read all of this post, but and as well im not a computer pro....but, i was able to get mbam to run. I was having the same problem nothing would make it run (not changing names or extensions, safemodes....blah). What i did was use another computer installed the program on it and copied the new folder to a disc. you cannot run the program from the disc, but i still had the program installed on the infected computer, so when i ran the disc it used the mbam.exe from the disc, and all the files from the computer. works like it should now. i did have to do all this in Safe Mode, when i tried it in normal mode something would restart the computer before the program could finish. I hope this helps some other unlucky soles.