Any computer experts - PLEASE HELP!

[hopefuldreamer]

I'm compltely stuck

My computer has some kind of virus/glitch going on. It keeps loading outlook automatically... hundreds of times. It is literally impossible to do anything, as any screen i try and load up (task manager, control panel etc) because the outlook pages are loading so fast they go over the top of anything else! I have tried rebooting in safe mode, and it still does it!

Does anyone have any idea what I can do, or if there are any commands I can try before XP actually loads up that will stop it automatically starting, delete outlook (or even the whole of microsoft office if I have to) so that this stops? Thanks for any advice!

 

[elgaz]

What are you on, Windows XP/Windows 7/Windows 8? And what version of office?

 

[RetrogradeOrbit]

Try this as a first thing to stop Outlook from loading millions of times. As the computer begins to boot, repeatedly hit F8 until the Windows boot menu comes up. Select "safe mode with command prompt"
Continue the boot process and then you do the following in the command prompt window... the bits in bold are the actual commands you need to type in and run.

Type cd c:\program files\microsoft office and press enter
Type dir and press enter
This command above will give you a list of the directories and files contained within the directory you have previously gone into.
You need to look for the directory that begins with "Office". Dependant upon your version it will be Office11, Office12, Office14 or Office15. Once you have identified it, do the following...
Type cd "The name of the directory" and press enter (ignore the quotation marks, they are just for emphasis)
Type dir outlook.exe press enter
You should get one result returned, for example I get;

20/10/2012 22:29 13,007,440 OUTLOOK.EXE
1 File(s) 13,007,440 bytes
0 Dir(s) 154,842,521,600 bytes free

It does not matter what you get as long as that file is in the directory. Now you are going to rename it and hope that this then stops whatever is opening multiple Outlook instances on your PC.

Type rename outlook.exe outlook.exe.old and press enter
This as you have probably guessed, renames the file extension from .exe to .old and hopefully will stop the problem you are having.

Type exit to come out of the command prompt and restart your computer.

Unfortunately, you still have to get to the root of what is causing the problem and fix it. But one step at a time, let`s make the computer usable first!

I do this kind of a crap for a living...! If you need further advice, feel free to PM me.

 

[hopefuldreamer]

Thank you so much Deathlok, I will try that when I get home

FYI I am on XP. Hope this works!

 

[RetrogradeOrbit]

Good luck...

I'm gonna be at my office working late tonight, until around 21:30, so if you need to, you can PM me anytime up until then.