A few months ago I got given a laptop to fix with Vista, the user INSISTED on Vista to do their job. Begrudgingly reinstalled the OS with SP2 - it was previously vanilla.
Got it back to fix again today - things discovered:
Swap file is on a USB stick (he mentioned he has applied registry "tweaks" to make this possible).
There are more tweak programs running in the background than you can shake a stick at.
Explorer has been heavily modified and the start menu is now on the right hand side of the taskbar, whilst the time is on the left (???). This is somehow easier to use. There are all sorts of "utility menus" from the tweak software.
He asked for Norton Internet Security to be installed (not co policy), now it has came back "disabled" by what I can only guess by malware.
I have ran process explorer / autoruns to disable most of the rubbish, Hijack this, combofix, remote AV. Software uninstall next.
There are three things I have been unable to do:
The Swap file I have tried setting back to C: under system properties, but everytime I do and restart it tries to go back to the USB stick (even when it is not plugged in - causes problems / not fun). I am guessing the registry tweak he mentioned? Looked online high and low for a solution - does anyone know how do to fix it?
There are a whole bunch of .reg files he downloaded from the net, guess one may be it (there is a lot in the folder). Could anyone tell me how to "unset" this feature without a complete reinstall?
The right hand start menu, looked online - the only thing I can find is when you set the language to read from right to left - with certain languages. But this is English but not sure how to turn it back. Again Googled round, cant find a solution.
What is C - Codec labelled as "CX Web Player"?
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When I return the laptop this time, against his wishes he is definitely being made a limited user. Leaving the laptop for now, been on this 5 hours. If anyone knows how to undo these problems, please let me know.
One hell of a small job. Thanks.
Got it back to fix again today - things discovered:
Swap file is on a USB stick (he mentioned he has applied registry "tweaks" to make this possible).
There are more tweak programs running in the background than you can shake a stick at.
Explorer has been heavily modified and the start menu is now on the right hand side of the taskbar, whilst the time is on the left (???). This is somehow easier to use. There are all sorts of "utility menus" from the tweak software.
He asked for Norton Internet Security to be installed (not co policy), now it has came back "disabled" by what I can only guess by malware.
I have ran process explorer / autoruns to disable most of the rubbish, Hijack this, combofix, remote AV. Software uninstall next.
There are three things I have been unable to do:
The Swap file I have tried setting back to C: under system properties, but everytime I do and restart it tries to go back to the USB stick (even when it is not plugged in - causes problems / not fun). I am guessing the registry tweak he mentioned? Looked online high and low for a solution - does anyone know how do to fix it?
There are a whole bunch of .reg files he downloaded from the net, guess one may be it (there is a lot in the folder). Could anyone tell me how to "unset" this feature without a complete reinstall?
The right hand start menu, looked online - the only thing I can find is when you set the language to read from right to left - with certain languages. But this is English but not sure how to turn it back. Again Googled round, cant find a solution.
What is C - Codec labelled as "CX Web Player"?
-------
When I return the laptop this time, against his wishes he is definitely being made a limited user. Leaving the laptop for now, been on this 5 hours. If anyone knows how to undo these problems, please let me know.
One hell of a small job. Thanks.
