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    My boyfriend has asked me to fix his computer... so I've spent about two hours going through and doing everything I know how.

    These are the following errors I am encountering:

    Windows Search Indexer
    Windows Defender User Interface
    Dependency Service Group Failed to Start (Network)
    COM Surrogate
    Windows Host Process Rundll32
    Windows Modules Installer

    All have either failed to start or encountered a problem.

    I have attempted to go into indexing options to rebuild or restore defaults, but am not able to select "Advanced" (It is greyed out.)

    I have also gone to command prompt (cmd) and attempted "sfc /scannow" but it reaches different percentages of completion before responding "Could not perform the requested operation."

    There were Nero products on the computer, which I have uninstalled. 

    I have also turned off DEP for all programs, adding C:\Windows\System32\dllhost.exe

    cmd popped up a couple of times while I was working on the PC, but the only one I caught was a file ending in regasm.exe (?)

    Also, in the Sys. Config. Utility under msconfig I have disabled all except Microsoft services.

     

    Anyone know of any solutions? We would just run the restore disk... but he never made one.

     

    Oh, you would probably also like to know we are working on an Alienware desktop with Vista Ultimate.

    Thursday, May 13, 2010 7:27 PM

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    It sounds like there's been some malware damage but I think you already suspect that. Regasm is a tool used to register .NET components so if these windows are popping up randomly then it might be a .NET virus or spyware application that is actively working around your efforts to quash it - that'd be an interesting concept.

     

    Have you tried using SysInternals Process Explorer or something to see what is actually running and investigate all the activity of any suspicious process? You could check the sfc log in %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log to see if that gives any more information about what is actually not working during the scan but the error you reported is pretty generic so it could be a long trawl.

    I'm not sure that turning DEP off would be a good idea in this case but then I suppose it doesn't really matter as the damage is already done no matter whether it was malware or user error. Have you considered just reinstalling Windows?

    • Edited by Luke_UK Wednesday, May 19, 2010 3:42 AM Corrected a typo
    Wednesday, May 19, 2010 3:41 AM