Not sure what is going on, but something is different or I am missing a step. This is the second incident I have run into in the last week. Have a XP Pro, infected with malware, popups and PC optimizer to name a few. I did my normal eradication in safe mode, Combofix and Malwarebytes. Then booted into normal startup. Everything looked good. Started IE, comes up, flashes and disapears. I try firefox, ok. I try opening Outllook and get an error: Windows installer cannot be accessed. Checked to make sure you are not running in safe mode. Icons on the desktop hve to right clicked then click on open since double click does not Work.

All in all, everything associated with the windows os is fubar and can't be opened, just get the windows installer error. Has anyone run into this as well? looks like I will have to start all over. TIA