Cannot open Control Panel.

[tomx2]

Hi.
I am using a Dell XPS 13 laptop running win 10 edition.
I cannot Open Control Panel.
When I try to launch, the screen Blinks. I did have some Malware issues during my conversion from win 8.1 to 10.
To clean up these infections I performed:
- A Recovery Drive/Refresh 10 & ran Virus Scans:
- Malwarebye, Advast and Defender to clean up any infections.

When I launch Control Panel from an old win 8.1 backup dated August 2015, Control Panel would not open. So it appears I had this problem before the upgrade.

So far, I have done the following to correct the problem without success:
- Deleted and recreated a new task File Explorer
- Perform a “ Clean Boot”, Troubleshoot by stopping MS programs and Startup entries.
- Ran Control Panel from the Command Line
- I was Successful launching Control Panel in Safe Mode.

I went into File Explorer and notice the “.CPL” files used by control panel, were being duplicated. For example “Appwiz.cpl had five entries in FE with the same timestamp.
I tried deleting the Duplicate Appwiz.cpl's but TrustedInstaller has security control and my Admin rights cannot grant me full control.

I copied Event Viewer page of this run for your review. See display below.

If I do have some additional Malware in my system, can you suggest a more stronger Virus Killer to remove these infections?

Do I have some corrupt .CPL files that can be fixed or replaced?
I have a Dell Latitude Laptop with a good working version of Windows 10. Could I transfer some system files to overlay the corrupt files(If that's my problem).

The event Viewer list shows I have a Faulting Module User32.dll. Can this module be replaced?

Tom.

Event Viewer Display

INFO - The shell stopped unexpectedly and explorer.exe was restarted.

ERROR:Faulting application name: explorer.exe, version: 10.0.10586.0, time stamp: 0x5632d4c0
Faulting module name: USER32.dll, version: 10.0.10586.20, time stamp: 0x565423d2
Exception code: 0xc000041d
Fault offset: 0x000000000000e747
Faulting process id: 0x1d30
Faulting application start time: 0x01d1434757245578
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\USER32.dll
Report Id: b9efd886-e49e-4681-956f-3361d439e5f3
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

 

[USAFRet]

Have you considered just nuking the whole thing and doing a full OS reinstall?
Save all your personal files elsewhere, and nuke the thing.

Wipe everything and do a full OS installation.

Or, you could mess around with this for days (months?) and still not get it quite right.

I know what *I* would do.

 

[reedo_43]

Agreed, malwarebytes is the best out there as far as I am concerned. Even if you manage to get it clean the damage is probably already done and you my find more damage that you are unaware of thus far.