Can a Computer virus damage your registry beyond repair?

7 thoughts on “Can a Computer virus damage your registry beyond repair?”

1. Sattamander says:

   October 6, 2010 at 4:19 am

   Please excuse mine too. You aren’t running these antivirus pgms all at the same time are you? That will totally lock up your computer since they tend to "fight" each other for control. I saw someone load Symantec on top of McAffe years ago and that PC wouldn’t move at all.

   First remove all but one antivirus pgm
   Second run CCleaner to get rid of all the stuff the uninstall pgms left
   Third check your hard drive space. In all my years most computers slowed down due to lack of space on the hard drive. If it is tight clean out some stuff you don’t want then do a defrag.

2. vlj2002 says:

   October 6, 2010 at 4:19 am

   Probably you just really need more ram or your hard drive is either dying… Of course virus can damage your registry, but by the time you use a bunch of program to clean out virus that should fix it. Use combofix from bleepingcomputer.com, then download malwarbytes(you may need to rename the installer/setup to something like winlogon.exe to be able to run or install it) from malwarebytes.com or softpedia.com, then clean the rest of the virus with Hitman Pro 3.5 from softpedia.com/cnet.com and just in case you do have a rootkit on your system use GMER from majorgeek.com(Use gmer to scan and anything in red delete.)

3. Murzy says:

   October 6, 2010 at 4:19 am

   have you ck’d to see what’s running in the background and loading at start up?
   START>RUN>type msconfig and then go to the START UP tab
   uncheck anything you don’t want to run (if you are not sure what it is, leave it ck’d)

4. The New fish guy says:

   October 6, 2010 at 4:19 am

   if you have more than one anti-virus running… problem found. it can, but at that point the computer wont turn on, a registry cleaner, or Microsoft repair disk, or even a system restore from before your virus problem will fix that. most if not all viruses make keys in the run sub folder, so if your computer starts fine, there probably isn’t any real damage.

5. Nothgrin says:

   October 6, 2010 at 4:19 am

   If your registry has problems you will know. You’ll start seeing tons of errors upon loading Windows and all that kind of good stuff. Maybe even booting to Windows would be a challenge.

   Most likely its some process taking extra CPU time. Open up your task manager which can be accessed with Control + Alt + Delete. And check your CPU usage if its low there’s no problem. If its high when you aren’t doing anything then check out what is eating up all the CPU time. And you can end the process of that application to close it.

6. SoccerMom says:

   October 6, 2010 at 4:19 am

   yea

7. Gary says:

   October 6, 2010 at 4:19 am

   Let’s hope that these were just typos:
   Systamatic (fraud) instead of Symantec (legit)
   SuperAntivirus (fraud) instead of SuperAntiSpyware (legit)
   Obit-Security (fraud) instead of IObit (legit)

   If it was just typos, then we can deal with the slowness issue. If you downloaded the fraud ones, you have major problems to clean up, and it may be that the easiest solution is to take it to the shop & have them format & re-install your XP. And as someone mentioned, if you have multiple anti-viruses, they will conflict & cause many problems, so un-install all but 1, in Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. (Except Norton – it takes a special tool to remove it properly. It’s free at:
   http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039 )

   Here’s some steps to speed up your computer. Do them in the order listed for best results:

   • Turn off programs not needed at start up. click Start > Run, type "msconfig" without the quotes & click Enter, click Startup tab, uncheck any items that you don’t need at startup, click Apply, click OK, restart your PC

   • Uninstall unneeded programs. click Start > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs

   • Change settings to performance instead of appearance. Right-click My Computer & select Properties, click Advanced tab, in the performance section click Settings, click the Visual Effects tab, select Adjust for Best Performance, click Apply, click OK

   • Run Disk Cleaner to remove unneeded files. Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup, select C:drive, in the next window check mark all boxes except Indexing

   • Run CCleaner to remove junk files. It’s free at http://www.ccleaner.com

   • Run Eusing Registry Cleaner to clean up unneeded registry entries. It’s free at http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm

   • Run Defrag to compact the files that Windows & other programs put all over the place on your hard drive. Click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Defragment, select C:drive & click Defrag

   • Restart your computer

   This is assuming you run regular spyware scans to remove malware that can slow down your PC. If not, get the free Malwarebytes & SuperAntiSpyware programs. They are excellent.
   SuperAntiSpyware http://www.superantispyware.com
   Malwarebytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/index.php
   Always update before running a scan

   …

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