Good afternoon, gentlemen,

Let me first start with some stats:

Manufacturer: eMachines
Model: T6212 (yup...I never replace comps unless they go completely kaput)
OS: Windows XP Home Edition

This comp has run absolutely flawlessly until I contracted the "Antivirus 2010 XP" virus just a couple days ago. Just in case you aren't familiar, it's malware that pretends it's a legit antivirus and shows exaggerated results to con someone into buying the product. When you have it, you can hardly open any program without the "antivirus" starting up. Hugely annoying, but finally got rid of it via Malwarebytes in Safe Mode.

Now, it seems, I have another problem after getting rid of the malware. Any time I try to open an application, I'm prompted with a window asking what program I'd like to open it with. Something has evidently screwed around with my executable file association. I can open most things just fine by choosing the program from a list, but that gets annoying and it even happens when I try to run anything from "Run" in the Start Up menu. I can't even get the command prompt to come up without it asking this.

Also, rundll32.exe is absent upon start-up. It doesn't even show up in the Task Manager and it won't let me start it as a new task. When I try to open certain things (i.e. Add and Remove Programs in the Control Panel), I get the error message "C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe -- Application Not Found".

After doing some research on the internet, I'm even more confused than before. Some people will tell you that you can fix the rundll32.exe and file association errors, but they don't tell you how Others will tell you that you need to do a system restore. Therein lies a problem: My license is perfectly legitimate for my operating system and software, but I have NO IDEA where my System Restore CD is.

I'd greatly appreciate if someone can tell me how I can go about fixing any of this. Being broke sucks, so I'd prefer to do it for free, if possible. If I can simply fix the file execution stuff first, I think I'd be home free and back to normal. But, if I can't, is there any way to do a system restore without the CD?

Thanks all, and thanks for taking the time to read.