Problem with my computer. (Can't get Zune player working)

billwill

Ok, so a few weeks ago I had a few viruses on my computer (I posted a thread about it, I believe). I ran a few anti-virus programs, which did an okay job of clearing things up, but there were still some remnants of the virus left over.

The last program I ran was Avast, I think. What happened after Avast was that for every program that I try to open, this window pops up:



From there, I go to browse and find what I need, and then open it that way. I did that a few times until I realized that I could open stuff right away just by right clicking a program's icon, then clicking "Run as Administrator". When I do that, it opens without me manually having to select the program. I should note that the Zune program would not open until I figured out the "Run as Admin" trick. Every time I tried to open Zune, it took me to the pic I posted above, but then after I selected zune manually, it just took me to the same box again, over and over, always asking me to choose which program I wanted to use to run "Zune.exe" and never actually opening Zune.

I lived with that for a few weeks. The viruses stopped (since I'm assuming they don't have a way to open), and everything moved along normally. That is, of course, until a few minutes ago.

I just bought a Zune HD. Apparently, after you plug one in, it starts up Zune itself. It appears to be locked until it connects and presumably exchanges some files with the Zune software. The problem is, I can't open Zune. That window pops open, saying how I want to open "rundl23" or something along those lines (which I assume is the software from my Zune HD trying to make contact), and I can't do it because my Zune Software can't start that way. And why I open up Zune as an Admin, it doesn't recognize the Zune HD.

How do I fix this?

nuka

The fact that your computer can't run .exe files without asking for help is concerning.

You can also use Hijack This to find any bad files your computer may have. Please do not try to remove the files yourself because the software is complicated and you can ruin everything! What you do is, you scan your computer and then you copy the log file to someone who knows what they're doing. There are forums made just for this purpose. They will tell you what is wrong and how to fix it. I don't know enough to look at the log file myself, but a quick google search should get you on the right feet.

billwill

That sucks.

Anything I can do about my Zune right now? I have a five hour drive tomorrow, and I was hoping to have some songs on this thing.

billwill

Any advice at all? I don't mean to push, I just really need to get to bed soon (school in six hours and then the aforementioned drive after that), and I'm hoping somebody can offer a quick fix for getting my Zune up and running.

Thanks.

Beltaine

It's going to be a registry setting.

Knowing which viruses (virii?) you had would help in narrowing down which.

Try this to fix:

If the Vista EXE association is damaged the location in the registry most likely changed is in this key...

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.exe]

The "OpenWithList" and "UserChoice" subkeys probably have some program listed as opening the .EXE file extension. These need to be cleared and, when cleared, the system will go back to the default and the EXE extension should then work again.

You can do this by creating a .REG file with these lines in it...

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.exe]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.exe\OpenWithList]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.exe\OpenWithProgids]
"exefile"=hex(0):

Use cut/paste to copy these five lines to an editor like Notepad and then save the file with a .REG file extension. Copy the file to the misbehaving Vista machine and double click on it (or right click and select Merge). You will likely have to say OK to a number of different things (the user access control and the registry editor for certain) but afterward (and a restart to be certain) the system EXE association should come back.

Dunadan019

download malwarebytes.

run malwarebytes.

remove leftover virii.

download the dlls that the virus deleted from a reputable source and put them back in the system32 folder.