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I recently had a nasty trojan on my box have one problem that has persisted after getting rid of it using Microsoft Security Essentials. Launching the chrome.exe executable results in iexplore.exe being launched instead. I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling chrome several times to no avail.

Question:
What could be causing chrome.exe to launch iexplore.exe and how can I fix it?

edit: I believe the main trojan was Win32/Alureon.DV which made use of a lot of other trojans/viruses to cause problems. I can give an extended list of all the stuff that Microsoft Security Essentials found if anyone thinks that will help.

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  • Even double-clicking on "chrome.exe" inside its directory (C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application) results in IE opening?
    – Isxek
    May 24, 2010 at 9:17
  • Yeah, it's really weird.
    – cseaton
    May 24, 2010 at 17:11

1 Answer 1

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Your mistake here is trying to clean an infected system. The best thing to do when you're computer is infected is to back up your data, reformat your drive, re-install your operating system and apps from the original media, and then restore your data. Anything else leaves you open to the possibility that you only removed part of the malware, and there's still a keylogger/password sniffer or something similar still running, just waiting for the chance to steal your online banking password. Soon, not even this will be enough.

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  • Um, the trojan was really limited to what it could do on my system. I run as a standard user and have UAC enabled. I also did a full-scan on all of my drives which allows you to also check the MBR.
    – cseaton
    May 24, 2010 at 18:41
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    If it was able to replace your chrome.exe file, it obviously got a lot deeper than you thought it did. And that's the problem with malware. May 24, 2010 at 19:17
  • @Joel Coehoom Chrome resides in the User directory. So it is entirely possible that it could have modified that executable even without Administrator privileges. So no, I don't think it got a lot deeper than he thought it did. I think it got just as deep as he thought, but it's just that you don't need to go any deeper to modify Chrome. Aug 17, 2011 at 5:10

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