Today, I worked on a system that was heavily infected. After a tedious removal precess, I was left with corrupt Windows Vista operating system files. To fix this, I first tried running System File Checker at the command prompt [Start>Run>"cmd">"sfc /scannow"] but received a message stating that SFC was unable to repair all errors. So, I ran a Repair Install by running [in Windows] the Windows Installation Disc that matched the version of Vista that was already installed, choosing the Upgrade option and allowing it to download the latest files for installation. Once this finished, I checked to make sure the repairs were made correctly by running SFC again, but with a different switch, "sfc /verifyonly". Fortunately, everything went well and the operating system files were fixed but I still had one more issue; every time I would close a Windows Explorer [not Internet Explorer] window, I would receive an error saying "Windows Explorer has stopped working...blah blah" and then it would restart Windows Explorer [not to be confused with rebooting the operating system]. Of course, I couldn't release this to a customer in its current condition, so I dug a little deeper into the error. The error window had an arrow that showed that the message could be expanded to view more information. The other information provided pointed to a file called "facesmoochAU.dll". I searched for the file and opened the folder where it was located. Inside this folder, there was only 1 other file, that appeared to be some sort of configuration data. I opened the file in Notepad and saw that it was actually part of a toolbar in Internet Explorer, a program that I wasn't even trying to run, so I uninstalled the toolbar and restarted the system. BAM! No more errors.
You may not have this exact issue, but the troubleshooting process here is one that could be applied to any number of issues. Hope it helps!
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