Explorer.exe not loading on startup after scan

[CompDoc]

I have seen this twice in the last week. After a Malwarebyte scan (one was in safe mode and the other normal mode) on a system with misc Trojan's including Vundo and where MalwareByte requested a reboot to contine and remove the infected files and where I did not reboot as I ran Combofix after MalwareByte the systems booted up to a blank desktop. No taskbar, icons etc. If I ran Task Manager (Ctrl/Alt/Del) I could manually start Explorer and teh system worked fine until another reboot. After hours researching the problem I gave up. Any Ideas? Could this be because I did not reboot when asked to by MalwareByte and or possible CombiFix stopping certain unrecognised services that Malwarebyte runs on reboot?

[JeanInMontana]

Umm yeah. Why aren't you doing what the program says? Don't use tools like ComboFix unless you know what your doing. MBAM removes most stuff safely that CF is going to see.

[CompDoc]

Umm yeah. Why aren't you doing what the program says? Don't use tools like ComboFix unless you know what your doing. MBAM removes most stuff safely that CF is going to see.

Actually that is not what I have found. In the case of multiple infections running Malwarebyte, COmboFix, SDfix and or SmitFraudFix is what it takes to clean a system. May times one tool just does not get it all.

[nosirrah]

Wow , you did about as much wrong here as you can .

MBAM should only be used from regular mode unless safemode is the only boot option that works . Booting to safemode to run a scanner is as obsolete as shutting down system restore before you start a malware cleanup .

It is always a bad idea to run multiple scanners doing scan and remove without giving each its own scan , remove and reboot cycle . MBAM does many of its registry fixes on reboot and you could have blown them away by not rebooting MBAM when prompted .

If this machine were handed to me I would likely restore a copy of the registry from system restore dating just before this all happened and do a repair install . If you shut down system restore before starting , this will likely not be an option either .

[JeanInMontana]

Actually that is not what I have found. In the case of multiple infections running Malwarebyte, COmboFix, SDfix and or SmitFraudFix is what it takes to clean a system. May times one tool just does not get it all.

You can't have found anything because you never completed the process. Don't blame the program for your behavior. If it says reboot then do that. Scan with HiJack This! and see if there is evidence of malware traces. I use this program exclusively for malware clean up as much as possible. It is so much safer for the user than the special fixes.