Windows XP clean install and printer reinstall

Hello All,

I'm running Windows XP Professional on a fairly new (Sept.) Toshiba system with 512MB RAM, 40GB hard drive and a Pentium 4 processor. I had installed multiple devices and aplications on the system to start my graphic design/desktop publishing business.

Then, my computer got attacked by what I now believe to be the worm W32/Klez.GEN which disabled my antivirus software, late last week. So, I had to do a complete system restore AND a clean install of Windows XP Professional (XP Home version, part of the OEM software on my computer, installs otherwise).

Since then, I've had trouble reinstalling devices and my system continues to be slow (I believe because PestPatrol found the virus on my Zip drive after the system restore and it was at that point the system started having slow startups again which could be, though, a prestart scanning process by my current antiviral software (Quickheal) running since it tells me what is loading at startup and gives me the option of deleting, accepting or ignoring the files).

Accordingly, in order to prevent a major recurrence the problems I had before doing a system restore (repeated crashing on start-up/multiple popup windows by "not responding" programs/slow restarts, repeated "this program needs to end messages for .exe files"; ultimately, blue screen messages), I am more slowly and delibrately reinstalling applications and devices.

I'm also partitioning some programs onto other drives using Partition Magic 8.0, and using a external hard drive to store my graphicss programs on (programs ranging from MS Publisher to Adobe Photoshop) as well as storing the files I've created by them (as well as other large files) on a Peerless disk. I've also purchased and am using "Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out" as well as the "Special Edition" of "Using Microft Office XP". So, I'm doing what I can to learn how to work with Windows XP and Office XP.

But today, while reinstalling my Minolta QMS 1250W laser printer, I encountered a problem that none of that can solve when the error message "Setup failed to create a temporary file in 'c:\123\SYSTEMDIR\123\' while installing the file MSPOOL_C.DLL. Please make sure you have create access to this directory" appeared.

What does this mean and how do I solve this problem? Will I have this kind of problem again once I solve it (i.e., when in reinstall my scanners and photo printer?).

As an intermediate moving toward advanced Windows user, should I be learning programming with Visual Basic (since whenever I try to do a search on the Microsoft site for answers to most of my issues, which I manage to solve on my own, I end up most of the time on the Developer Site).

Thank you.

The Budding Techie

It sounds like you didn't manage to quite kill off klez and that your system may have been reinfected.

Also repartitioning after the fact always carries some risks of creating overlapping partitions which in turn corrupt data.

To see if you have been reinfected, start, run, regedit, edit, find, type in wink, click find

If it finds any entries with the single word wink in it - you still have klez or you didn't manage to clean the other virus klez installs - w32.elkern.4296

You made no mention of formatting thoroughly or running running the klez and/or elkern tool.


This tells you about klez with a link to the cleaner

This is about the elkern virus and the cleaner

Online checker from trendmicro

Panda online scan (click the pic that says free)

You should check every one of your diskettes and your zip disks and any other writeable media and any network connections you may have. Klez is very good at hiding and spreading.