Wininet.dll dies a horrible death

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-08-08 07:26pm

My father, the only person in my family who thoroughly refuses to try any other OS but Windows, was checking his email using Outlook today when AVG reported that he had a virus (Trojan horse actually), Downloader.Agent.ETP, in C:\WINDOWS\system32\wininet.dll. He did the appropriate action when the alert popped up and pressed Heal. It said it was successful but required a restart.

He restarted the computer, but after everything was closed and only the desktop picture remained (Explorer.exe was fully shut down, Ctrl-Alt-Del did not work), it locked up. He finally had to press the button to turn it off.

After turning the computerback on, he had a dozen programs scream about how they could not launch because wininet.dll was not found. Clicking the Internet Explorer icon tells me that dwwin.exe could not start because WININET.DLL was not found- dwwin is of course Windows' error reporter.

MSN Messenger doesn't start, and Outlook crashes when you go to the inbox. Luckily, FireFox, AVG, and the USB WiFi application run just fine.

Now, checking in AVG reports that wininet.dll is quarantined/backed up, but infected. Restoring it also restores the virus. He's using Windows XP Pro SP1. Anyone have any suggestions? Should I just reinstall the OS (and will that break all his programs)?

Chris OFarrell · Post by **Chris OFarrell** » 2006-08-09 12:19am

Also if your going to download the file, double check its not one of the files that has been updated through service packs or security patches or so on. If it is, make sure you download the correct one for your OS!

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-08-09 01:32am

I ripped it off of one of my other Windows PCs and network transferred it to the shared documents folder, then stuck it in the system32 folder. Seems to have worked- I just now remembered though that the one I transferred in was from Windows XP Home though. Oh well, doesn't seem to be a problem. Thanks!

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-08-09 01:54pm

Everything seems to be working fine, but a box pops up saying that cli.exe failed to initialize when the box boots up. We hit okay and it works normally.