Hi Everyone and thanks in advance for the help, Ok my boss opened a bogus email yesterday morning and hosed his computer up with spyware. It loaded WinHound and a whole bunch of other spyware including a desktop hijacker. I removed all the spyware that I could manually and removed the desktop hijacker and winhound manually. I ran a scan on the computer with Trend micros housecall(even though we have officescan 7.0 because housecall has better anti-spyware) free scan program. I had to leave and he finished it up. Later on in the day he restarted the computer and it came up on startup and said the error message... explorer.exe application error. The application failed to initialize properly... So this morning I went through some steps to try and figure this out. I found this website http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;873155&Product=windowsxpsp2 which informed me to bypass the DEP security built in with XP SP2 and an Athlon 64 processor. I bypassed it and it worked fine but now how do I find what program is the one setting off the security being that I don't have norton installed in the first place. I went through and removed all the housecall leftover files and removed all temporary files, temporary internet files, cookies, history, and application data for housecall and winhound and anything else that had winhound remnances. Restarted and booted with the original xp that had DEP enabled still and it still gives the same error. Booted back to no DEP and ran virus scan and found no viruses (with officescan). Ran Damage Cleanup and once again rebooted into DEP mode still same problem. This is where I am at so if anyone could help I would be very appreciative! Joe

I need to dispell a common myth regarding email virus. Opening email itself does not open the virus gate. The gate opens only when you click on a clickable link in the email. i_XpUser

If you have Mpegport.sys driver, try below. To work around this problem, disable the Mpegport.sys driver in Device Manager by using Safe Mode. To do this, follow these steps: 1. Restart your computer. 2. Press the F8 key. On a computer that is configured to start multiple operating systems, press F8 when the Startup menu appears. 3. Use the arrow keys to select a Safe Mode option, and then press ENTER. 4. Click Start, click Run, type devmgmt.msc, and then click OK. 5. In the View menu, click Show hidden devices. 6. Expand Non-Plug and Play Drivers. 7. Right-click the Mpegport.sys driver, and then click Properties. 8. On the Driver tab, change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click OK. 9. Restart your computer. If you require the Mpegport.sys driver, you can also turn off DEP. To turn off DEP, follow these steps: 1. Restart your computer. 2. Press the F8 key. On a computer that is configured to start multiple operating systems, press F8 when the Startup menu appears. 3. Use the arrow keys to select a Safe Mode option, and then press ENTER. 4. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK. 5. At the command prompt, type the following, and then press ENTER: bootcfg /raw “/noexecute=alwaysoff /fastdetect” /id 1 If you have multiple start entries or start options, you may have to manually modify the Boot.ini file for your computer. To disable DEP by modifying the Boot.ini file, change the /noexecute policy level to alwaysoff. 6. Restart your computer. I agree; computing.net does need an edit button.

Does anyone know if this will work using a running an Intel chip? I got the same WinHound spyware from accessing a website. Was able to remove WinHound, but can only boot in safe mode. Thanks for any help. Richard