XP Home Programming Bug or Virus After Effect

From: Peter Jam (pjam_at_lorch.com)
Date: 07/09/04 

Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 11:10:51 -0700

I posted a similar question at 132933 and didn't get a satisfactory
answer, so I am changing it slightly.

Is it possible that a virus\trojan\spyware can corrupt or remove
administrator users permissions or rights to prgrams and files?

I have been working on a friends computer with XP Home that let the
Norton Antivirus lapse and probably got a virus. He downloaded McAfee
and tried to install it with NAV 2002 still on there. Then he tried
the Free version of Zonealarm 5.0 in combination with his Norton
Antivirus 2002/Mcafee.

For some reason this has proven disastrous to some users and not
others. The fix is to remove ZA 5 and install ZA 4.5.
My problem is this: All three Administrator users as well as the
Administrator in "Safe Mode" Get: "You do not have access to change
system configuration", or very similar. I finally gave myself
"Permissions" to Zonalarm in the registry and was able to uninstall it,
but I could not completely uninstall the NAV2002 or re-install it due
to lack of "Rights".

I found the file settings.liveupdate which according to Symantec I
should delete to successfully re-install NAV2002, I could not delete it
in any many. Logged in as Administrator I didn't even have access to
the c:\documents and settings\all users\ in "Safe Mode Command" prompt.
When I looked in the registry for that file and right clicked on
Permissions NO ONE had access. I gave the Administrator Access,
rebooted to no avail.

I created a new Administrator User and he didn't even have
access to the Programs?? I went into Control Panel and noticed that
almost all the users had a red X instead of their Icon, so I tried to
change one and I got a Class error and the report saying I did not have
priveledges to edit the icon.

I tried doing an Upgrade Re-install of XP Home, which even required
Re-Activation?

In my Internet searches for answers to this lack of "permissions" I
find many, many people who do not have access rights even though they
are Administrators.

Or is this just a Programming Bug in XP Home?

I finally formatted and re-installed windows XP Home last night, after
struggling for two weeks with this problem so am still very interested
in what is going on here??

Relevant Pages

  • Re: XP Home Programming Bug or Virus After Effect
    ... a virus can change permissions and corrupt an operating system ... it's the fault of the virus file that maliciously altered the registry. ... All three Administrator users as well as the ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin)
  • Re: EMERGENCY: Files lost
    ... Windows XP Home Edition, with SP2. ... or other folders and files at that level. ... Administrator, I do have normal access to all files and folders. ... You now need to edit the permissions of every file (step 6 on my page. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.configuration_manage)
  • Re: User Account Suddenly Unaccessable
    ... Revert to the original profile folder. ... Log on as administrator ... The Sharing tab has "Do not share this folder" checked, and the rest of the tab has no data. ... In the middle section none of the "permissions" categories have any checkmarks - no marks in allow, ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.general)
  • Re: Do not have accessibility to change certain file names
    ... ownership and permissions supersede administrator rights. ... you can set XP Home permissions in Safe Mode. ... Open Explorer, go to Tools and Folder Options, on the view tab, scroll to ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.accessibility)
  • Re: User Account Suddenly Unaccessable
    ... Revert to the original profile folder. ... Log on as administrator ... The Sharing tab has "Do not share this folder" checked, and the rest of the tab has no data. ... In the middle section none of the "permissions" categories have any checkmarks - no marks in allow, ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.general)
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