registry problem from passthison

[butanegg]

I'm running Win95 and IE5.5. Tonight my PC's system jammed on a spyware ad when I tried to go to my homepage (= Google), and when I started deleting the icons that had appeared on my Desktop, I noticed some of the files said "passthison." After the system stopped responding, I tried to reboot and can't -- it goes thru the process but instead of my Desktop it comes up with the system "Registry Problem" message, but the "Restore from Backup and Restart" button does nothing (nor does CONT-ALT-DEL). How can I get to my DOS directories (and what files do I need to delete when I do), please? I do have a Setup Boot Disk floppy as well as the Windows95 CD for my operating system. (I have some systems files backed up on CDs since then, but the last complete one I have is two years old.) What I don't have is much time, because I'm on deadline to get some Word97 files in that computer finished and to my publisher within days. (I'm sending this from my laptop.)

[butanegg]

In the first hour or two of 2 July 2004, my PC was hijacked by passthison; when I started deleting the files it created, the system froze, and when I have tried to reboot, I get a "Registry Problem" message that keeps Windows from loading. (I'm running Win95 and IE5.5 and not going to switch to anything newer.)

My income is from writing I do as an independent contractor for a legal publisher, and I was working on the Word97 files for a deadline in about a week when I got shut out of the system. That was my immediate problem, and it has been solved since I got access to the files (thru F8 to MSDOS) and downloaded them to floppy so I can process them on another PC and e-mail them in from this laptop. But I've already lost about 20 hours I should have been working on those files, and I'm still not able to boot the PC, where all my e-mail files and other business accounts are.

I have a Setup Boot Disk floppy as well as the Win95 CD for my PC. I don't know what to do in MSDOS to solve the registry problem. REGEDIT.EXE is present and probably operational, but (whereas in this laptop it opens a window with the registry keys) it is a command that needs filenames for parameters, and I don't know what filenames to use. I haven't yet found info about restoring the registry from the backup it automatically makes (and which may not be corrupted, since the system has never rebooted Win95 since the hijacking), and I don't know how to back one up in MSDOS or to use the C parameter to create one. I don't know what I should load into the PC from the Win95 CD or from a floppy generated on this laptop or another computer to solve the problem. I do have a 2-year-old backup CD from the ailing PC that probably has whatever filenames on it that I need to know, if I knew what to look for. I would be grateful to anyone who could lead me thru the process to get my PC running again.

[Wainui]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=322754