Need help with parents' computers

[CaiusWickersham]

My parents use computers frequently and we've come to a problem I really can't solve myself. My mother was browsing the Internet and somehow got a dose of Windows Police Pro. I was able to rip it out with Spybot (I put it on my mother's laptop after seeing a disturbing number of pop-up ads) with some struggling, but now no programs will run except for IE. Click any other program and the "what program do you want to run this with" menu comes up. We're ready to just re-format the hard drive & start over.
My father's computer has something too, but he can't tell me what it is, only that things run slow after a system restore. If anyone has some ideas on how to fix it, I would appreciate it. Both machines run XP Home & Professional, SP3.

[Stark]

Don't use XP?

I'm not familiar with this piece of malware, but if it's killed your MIME list I'm not sure there's a quick way to fix it, aside from a restore point.

Just buy Win7 and forget about it. Isn't it like $30 for students?

[Darth Wong]

Why not just format the drives and reinstall XP? It's obviously buggered beyond repair anyway.

[Stark]

If it let's him rebuild the program associations, it's just inconvenient, but if it's totally broken the system (ie, even when he chooses the right app files don't open, only IE works) then I'd recommend just formatting it too.

[Mr Bean]

Looks like the virus wacked part of your windows registry and a few windows files but not any of your system files since it's still running. You might have a secondary virus/bit of malware still trying to run by piggbacking on your software but can't run due to the sweep you already run that gives the same effect.

Either way, Wipe it and re-install everything. You are not going to fix this unless you have about a week free and like doing command line replacements of Windows files in Safe Mode. Just format it all and re-install.

[Edi]

Though take backups of any files you want to save first.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Either way, Wipe it and re-install everything. You are not going to fix this unless you have about a week free and like doing command line replacements of Windows files in Safe Mode. Just format it all and re-install.

Or, if there was not a virus involved, you could just do a repair installation from XP install CD, which would probably fix the system and save you from installing all the applications again. But since there probably was a virus or at least some kind of malware, it is perhaps safer to format and re-install from scratch.

[Lord Revan]

Why not just format the drives and reinstall XP? It's obviously buggered beyond repair anyway.

I'd suggest doing this as well if you a) have the disks to reinstall the OS b) the PC is new enough that it's not too expensive to have professionals do it.

though getting Vista or Windows 7 might be another option assuming the computers in question are capable of running them.

[Jaepheth]

If a computer is still running slow (relative to when it was first acquired) even after a restore, your hard drive may be going bad. Run a diagnostic software (available at the manufacturer's website) on the drive.