Computer Can't Open ANY Files!

Hey there! I am having a serious problem. It just today appeared, and I have no idea what could have possibly caused it. I am at a major loss regarding what to do.

BASICALLY, here's what happened:

1. I turned on my computer, and logged in.
2. I tried to open Firefox. Nothing happened. I thought the computer was just lagging.
3. I waited a while, and looked at my taskbar: most of my applications were not loaded... including my Avast! Anti-Virus. I tried to start it; no cigar. I am not being notified that the EXE file is not associated with anything or something. It's just... not doing anything at all.
4. Reboot!
5. I log in again. I am notified that my copy of Windows my not be legitimate.
6. Same problem as before.
7. Tried running a restore point. Didn't fix anything at all.
8. I am having the exact same problem in SAFE MODE.

What the heck? This is super random, and just spontaneously appeared. I haven't installed any programs recently or anything. I have no idea what could have caused this... especially considering I am generally a very secure computer user.

I ran Windows Defender and BitDefender, and neither returned any problems. However, there is obviously something wrong. I couldn't install CCeaner, ATF Cleaner, or MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware, or SUPERAntiSpyware due to the fact I can't open any files. I also tried in Safe Mode.

While writing this, I just attempted to download HijackThis, and landed on a webpage that says this.



Is that a hint at all?

Besides that, I have no other leads at all. No restore points, no nothing. Any help would be immensely appreciated! This is a very serious problem, considering my job revolves around my computer, and I have no idea what I can do to fix this.

Thanks so much!

You probably have some kind of malware. There are some bootable antivirus scanners where you download a CD image and burn it, then boot the resulting CD to scan your computer. You'll have to do this on a working machine. Google should turn up such programs, Microsoft has a bootable scanner but I don't recall what it's called exactly.

Hey there.

I tried to do this, but I couldn't get it to work. I tried with both a CD, and a USB Flash Drive. I'll go into the BIOS, change the boot order, and when the computer starts up, I'll be notified that the computer is booting from whatever I specified (USB, CD, etc) but then Windows 7 will start up normally.

:/ I am at a complete loss as to what is going wrong. Is there a way to, say, schedule an Avast! pre-boot scan without opening Avast! itself? Anything like that? I am totally lost, and I really need this fixed. Any help would be immensely appreciated!!

Are you sure you made a bootable CD? And there are some extra hoops you have to jump through to make a bootable flash stick. You could make a bootable live linux CD from a distro like Fedora as another weapon. I sometimes use a bootable linux cd to see if there are suspicious files with suspicious dates in the windows, system32 and user directories.

If you have good backups your safest course is to erase the hard drive and reinstall windows.

I think this is the Microsoft bootable disk I was thinking about. I haven't ever used this, I just read about it somewhere. http://connect.microsoft.com/systemsweeper

Hey there Doug G.

I managed to get that Windows SystemSweeper scan to run. However, it did not pick up any viruses, malware, et alii. Right now, I am in the process of finding and running similar programs (such as Avira's rescue CD) but so far, nothing has worked.

Do you have any other suggestions? Could something else be wrong?

EDIT - I got it fixed! I ran cmd.exe, and typed Sfc /Scannow, and then typed in CHKDSK C: /F. Then I restarted, and everything was better. I don't know what could have possibly caused it, but I'm now running a full Avast! scan of my computer.

Thanks for your help!

Perhaps you had some disk corruption that chkdsk fixed. Anyway glad you got it going.

May be its due to malware or disk corruption.