Virus/Trojan with Pop-Ads and Disabled Windows XP Automatic Updates with Error 1058

A nasty virus/Trojan with pop up windows affecting both IE 6 and Firefox 3 started on one of my laptops. It initially started with Acrobat starting up a couple a times in previous days before the full onslaught of pop up windows trying to sell crap. Yeah, like I'm going to click on a Caribbean vacation and spend boat loads of money from a virus produced pop up ad, dumb.

It added Add On components into IE and Firefox, and probably into the system. The virus also turned off Automatic Updates for Windows XP and attempts at turning it on through the Control Panel failed. Running Windows Update gives an error, and the error page on the Windows Update web site gives you a list of items to turn on in services.msc through the Run... window. Trying to turn on Automatic Updates in services.msc to "Automatic" and "Start" gives an error 1058. This loser virus then starts asking if you want to install VirusRemover, A-holes. I tried the following measures:

1. Ran AVG 8 Scan, restarted: Fail. Pop ups continue.
2. Ran Ad-Aware 2008 Scan, restarted: Fail. Pop ups continue.
3. Ran Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Scan (via download.com), restarted: Success! No more pop ups. Approximately 15-20 infected files.

After successfully running Malwarebytes, I went into services.msc (throught the Run... window in the Start button) and opened the properties of Automatic Updates. I was able to change the Automatic Updates to "Automatic" and "Start" the service.

Source: http://help.wugnet.com/windows2/automatic-updates-disabled-error-1058-ftopict519669.html

Microsoft Word 2003 Crashes at Startup

Microsoft Office 2003 Word was crashing several seconds after startup which also happened when a new Outlook email was created (Outlook opens Word for text editing). Crashes can be avoided if the mouse is moved around the menus, but after 2 seconds of idle time, Word crashes.

Solutions:

1. Go to Printer and Faxes, and select the correct default printer. Now try opening Word.

2. With Hidden Folder viewing on, Go to C:>Documents and Setting>User>Application Data>Microsoft>Templates. Change normal.dot to normal.old. Open Word and let Word create a new normal.dot file.

Source: http://www.officearticles.com/word/steps_to_troubleshooting_microsoft_word.htm