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Is it bad to delete explorer.exe?

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by a former member 2 views

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Hello.
I have a windows XP system with a little viral problem that infected my explorer.exe file...
(c:\documents and settings\all users\documents)
I was wondering if it is a bad thing to delete the file? If it is, how would I come around to fixing it? If not, how should I fix my little virus problem?
Thank you.

4 replies

by areets

Firstly, deactivate the loading of explorer (ex: replace with winfile), then do as you wish.

TSP

by lordinfidel

It should be located in one place and one place only on NT4/2K/XP: c:\winnt\explorer.exe

If it is *ANY* place else it is fair game to get rid of.

People typically name these files after the real ones to confuse their victim.

Your explorer.exe in winnt is not infected. It's just that the file you see in your documents is being loaded.

There are virii that will infected all exe's. If you get one of those, the only thing that you can do at that point is reformat because you are hosed.

by gunida

Well first of all you didnot indicate type of viral infection your system has.If you have the folder i386 copied to your system,you could get the problem fixed by reinstalling explorer.Otherwise format the partition containing the OS like Lordinfidel suggested.But take note get a good antivirus installed on your system and get virus removal tools regularly.

by mrbill-

If it is a Fat partition use a boot disk with a good virus scanner on it. Then reboot, search the registry for any explorer.exe entries, make sure they point to %SystemRoot%\Explorer.exe or \Windows(or whatever your windows directory is)\Explorer.exe if not change them. Delete the bad Explorer.exe you may have to reboot first. If you have to reformat make sure you backup your data files.

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