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Unidentified registry entry & files

By figrsk8r ·
I have a user that has started getting the following errors:
Windows cannot find 'ŽŽ?Ž___' (this is my best representation of the place holder hollow rectangles). Make sure you type the name correctly and then try again. To search for a file, click the start button and then click search.

Desktop
Could not load or run '___' specified in the registry. Make sure the file exists on your computer or remove the reference to it in the registry.

We have reinstalled windows, they have not removed any files before or after this started to occur, they do not have a virus. I have looked for files in all user settings, but could not find anything. We get about 4 of these sets of files before the system finally restarts. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to resolve this and/or identify the missing info in the registry and desktop. All the programs appear to work correctly the only impact seems to be that eventually the wireless network keeps dropping and response time gets really slow. (I've defrag and cleaned out all unnecessary files). This is a notebook that is used by a employee who takes it home to work from home several days a week and they are having a difficult time staying connected to the office.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

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by BFilmFan In reply to Unidentified registry ent ...

Could be a number of things.

Scan for malware. Expecially if the system goes off-site and isn't protected against spyware.

Could be a corrupted registry.

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by BobHo In reply to Unidentified registry ent ...

If you want to do a little investigating start by doing a search through the registry for the file name you show above. This could give you a clue about what app windows is looking for. It could be a corrupted entry for a legitimate file or it could be malware as stated in answer 1. You might be able to discern this by where the key is. If you are not sure, post back here with the full key so we can take a look at it.

Also, if your machine is running properly (except for not being able to find this nonsense app) it should be safe to delete it. If you do want to delete it, back up your registry before making any modifications (just in case something goes awry).

Cheers.

RW

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by figrsk8r In reply to Unidentified registry ent ...

Thanks for the replies. The font here didn't represent the file name very well. It's just those tall skinny hollow rectangles that are used as placeholders in the character map. I've checked it for malware and viruses using trend micro, ad aware pro & spybot. I've used several other system analysis tools and all come up clean. I know that there is a program files(s) missing, but since there is no file name supplied, I can't look for it in the registry. All temp files and unused desktop icons have been cleared. We even tried loading a backup copy of the registry (we keep a copy of everyone setup backed up) before they had the problem but it's still there.

Since the file name is garbage, I was just trying to figure out if there is a way to identify the file. It's obviously causing some sort of system confusion because of the intermittant dropped connection and the slow down of the system.

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by Juergen Hartl In reply to Unidentified registry ent ...

in windows explorer (not IE) you can go to TOOLS/FOLDER OPTIONS then FILE TYPE and see if you can find any strange entries.
Or you can run regedit.exe and look under the key
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for any suspicious entries.
If you find an entry that is diaplayed with those rectangles you can then select RENAME and copy the entry then pate it in Word or any other wordprocessor and change the font to display readable characters.

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