Have started seeing this a lot. You have uninstalled an AV but Windows still reports it as being there in the Security Center.

To get rid of this message, click Start, Run. Type ’services.msc’ and enter.

Now find Windows Management Instrumentation Service and stop it.

Now open Wndows Explorer and Delete the Repository folder under c:\windows\system32\wbem\

Now restart the WMI service and Windows should start reporting the AV situation correctly.

If you can’t delete the folder then you may have to disable the WMI service and reboot. Then delete the folder, change the WMI service back to Automatics and reboot again.

1. Boot the computer into the “Safe Mode” options by pressing F8 prior the Windows Logo. 
2. Select the option “Repair Your Computer” 
Note: If you do not have this option, you will need the Windows Disc. Once you have that disc, boot into it as if you were to install windows and after you select the language you will get the “Repair Your Computer” option. 
3. Now you can get into Command Prompt 
4. From the Command Prompt window, navigate to \Windows\winsxs folder 
5. Then type: rename pending.xml to pending.old.xml 
6. Now reboot the PC, you might still see the configuring updates, but this time it will go away. 

This a particularly nasty spyware. Firstly run MalwareBytes or Spybot to remove most of it. then you have to manually remove some files.

This link has instructions. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-windows-system-suite

After this, Windows may still report that an Antivirus program is currently installed, reporting it as Windows System Suite.

Do the following:

In Control Panel click on Administrative Tools, then Services, from the list of services find Windows Management Instrumentation right click mouse and from dropdown list stop the service.

Find folder C:\windows\system32\wbem, inside this folder identify the repository folder and delete only this folder (the repository folder) from your computer.

In Administrative Tools find Windows Management Instrumentation service again, and re-start the service by right clicking mouse and pressing start from dropdown list. Restarting this service re-builds the repository folder database on your computer, which should now only contain information about your currently installed antivirus & firewall programs.

To reset the Windows Security Centre you must re-boot your computer.

You should then be able to reinstall you AV program.

However, I was still having trouble installing AVG, it kept failing to start the AVG Service at the end of the install.

Following the mentioned thread and the directions for windows registry corruption:

“Please open Windows Registry Editor
- open menu Start -> Run -> enter “regedit” and cofirm OK
In opened Registry Editor find this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options
Check that none of sub-keys have name like AVG processes (all AVG processes):
avgam.exe
avgcfgex.exe
avgcmgr.exe
avgcsrva.exe
avgcsrvx.exe
avgdiag.exe
avgdiagex.exe
avgdumpa.exe
avgdumpx.exe
avgemc.exe
avgfrw.exe
avgfws8.exe
avgfwwiz.exe
avgiproxy.exe
avgnsa.exe
avgrsa.exe
avgscana.exe
avgscanx.exe
avgsrmaa.exe
avgsrmax.exe
avgstrma.exe
avgstrmx.exe
avgsysta.exe
avgsystx.exe
AVGToolbarInstall.exe
avgtray.exe
avgui.exe
avgupd.exe
avgwdsvc.exe
fixcfg.exe
And remove them from registry. ”

I deleted those entries in the registry and, finally I was able to install successfuly the AVG 8.5.

You can download the Microsoft Blocker Toolkit

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21687628-5806-4ba6-9e4e-8e224ec6dd8c&displaylang=en

Or add the following to the regstry:

Registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\8.0
Key value name: DoNotAllowIE80 (DWORD)
When the key value name is not defined, distribution is not blocked.

• When the key value name is set to 0, distribution is not blocked.
• When the key value name is set to 1, distribution is blocked.

Hi Neil

I had a recent issue where I could only open Outlook in Safe mode.  Like you I did all the usual things, Repair, Reinstall etc.

It turned out to be a corrupted preferences file (C:\Documents and Settings\profile_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\outcmd.dat)

I deleted it and Outlook re-created a new one the next time it opened.  This fixed my problem.

 IHTH

 Regards  Bruce Richardson

****************************************

Have a weird one here.

XP Pro

Office Pro 2007

Outlook would get an error opening and would only open in safe mode.

Email account was an IMAP account

To get outlook working I have done the following:

Uninstalled Office rebooted and reinstalled office – made no difference

Uninstalled Office rebooted then followed Microsoft’s method for manually uninstalling all references to office including the registry – rebooted and reinstalled office – made no difference.

Also removed, not just disabled, all addins – no good.

I have even started outlook without email support.

It does not matter what I try Outlook encounters a problem and closes.

It will only open in safe mode.

http://www.mrtechnologyllc.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47:corrupted-print-drivers&catid=32:windows-xp&Itemid=74

Sometimes in Windows XP the print drivers will become corrupted which will prevent the user from printing. I’ve seen this happen primarily when using an HP device. The following are the steps to removing the printer and corrupted driver.

Delete all printers in control panel.

• From the Administrative Tools select Services and stop the Print Spooler service.
• Go to windows\system32\spool\drivers\w32×86\3\ and delete everything in that folder.
• Go to \windows\system32\spool\printers and delete any .spl or .shd files
• Go to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers. If there are any subkeys present with printer names delete them
• Restart the spooler. Re-install the printer drivers.

This would be the starting point to fixing a corrupted hp print driver.

http://www.ieinfosite.co.uk/tip_view.asp?id=162

If the toolbar in Outlook express has gone missing, first of all try putting it back by right-clicking the menu and selecting Toolbar. If this doesn’t do the trick, you’ll need to make a small change to the registry. Start regedit (Start, Run.. and type in regedit) and browse your way to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{(whatever you have here)}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0

To get the main Outlook Express toolbar and menubar back, double-click the Browser Bands string in the right-hand pane and change the fifth number to anything other than 00. 01 and 02 appear to bring back the menu bar. 03 and 04 bring back the menu bar and toolbar.

You need to restore the file userinit.exe to C:\WINDOWS\system32\ and restore the Registry data:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
“Userinit”=”C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\userinit.exe”

Go to regit on another networked computer - registry - connect network registry -and enter the computer name with the problem. You can edit the registry that way .

Or take the hard drive out, connect via usb, and load registry hive that way.

Or Download tool http://www.ms-mvp.org/

Then I found the solution (thanks Ste123) on a Microsoft forum of all places and here it is. Naturally, use it at your own risk.

1) Open a CMD prompt
2) Then type cd /d %windir%\inf
3) Then type ren oem*.inf oem*.old
4) Then type ren oem*.pnf oem*.old1
5) Then find the file by name INFCACHE.1 and remove it from the inf directory
6) Close all windows and reboot the computer to safe mode and
start the installation of SP2 and it should go fine

Thanks to STE123

This is becoming more and more common. Your PC gets IP address settings OK, can browse the LAN but cannot access the Internet. Spyware cleaners cannot update because they use the same setting as IE. Hijack This shows the list of items loading at startup. Look for a registry entry for Internet Explorer for the ‘proxy override’ or ‘proxy server’, usually it is set to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) or .local which causes IE to look at the local computer (itself) for internet access.

Remove these entries and reboot will normally get the browsing and online updates happening again, and still do a scan for spyware using Spybot and Malware Bytes.