Explorer.exe won’t execute after running Malware Bytes

While cleaning some EXTREMELY infected computers lately, I’ve run into a couple of machines that wouldn’t start explorer.exe.  This always happened after a MalwareBytes scan followed by a reboot.  Trying to run explorer manually would tell me windows could not find the file, even though I could see it.  After a lot of trial and error, here’s a fix that seems to work:

1.  Press CTRL+ALT+DEL

2.  Click on File > New Task (run)

3.  Type regedit in the Run Box and press ENTER

4.  Browse to:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ImageFileExecutionOptions

5.  Delete the keys explorer.exe and iexplore.exe (only one, or both, may exist)

6.  Close Regedit and Restart

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Posted on December 11, 2008 at 6:12 pm by Clay · Permalink
In: general, windows, work

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