I believe this only applies to Windows XP and Windows 2000, but: if
you ran AIMFix between 12 and 4 today (May 18) then you MUST run init.reg
to repair your userinit entry in Windows. Save this file to your
desktop, double click on it, and run it to merge the information into
the registry (click Yes when asked to do so). I will put this fix into
AIMFix as well as soon as I can, but in the meantime, run the reg file
to repair the setting.
Apparently one of the virus variants overwrites this key, and AIMFix was not correctly repairing it. If you do not run this, you will be unable to log back into your computer and will need to run a repair install of Windows. I apologize profusely to anyone this happens to, but with hundreds of variants and the several dozen that have come out just in the past few days, it's been difficult to test every single situation to catch problems like this.
Instructions for running a repair on your Windows installation are as follows:
You will need the Windows install CD for whatever version of Windows you have, then you will need to start your computer off that CD. This should be included with the materials that come with your computer, or available from a help desk.
When it starts up off the CD (it will say "press any key to boot from CD", just press something), then let it load all the stuff it needs to load. If you don't see the press any key to boot from CD and it just boots right into Windows, you'll need to enter your BIOS and tell it to boot from CD-Rom first. Look for "press F12 (or some other key) to choose boot device" or "press F1 for setup" or something like that on the very first screen when your computer starts. it's different for absolutely every computer, so just read carefully and look for anything that looks like it lets you choose the "boot device" and you'll want to tell it to use the CD rom drive.
When the install is ready it will give you the option to set up Windows now, Repair a windows install from the recovery console, or quit setup. Press ENTER to set up windows. Press f8 to agree to the terms of Windows and skip to the next screen
Now press R to repair the Windows installation, and the rest of it completes automatically. This will not erase your personal files, but you will need to reinstall all security updates (just run Windows Update after you are finally back in Windows)
-Jay