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Another "Windows Security Center Is Turned Off" Help Request
I'm at my wits end. I'm retired Air Force with 25+ years IT and System Security background from the Air Force. Earlier today I took a Trojan hit on my home computer. I have searched this forum and tried applying every corrective fix I could find here...no resoulution. As a last resort, I'm going to post what happened, what I've tried, and hope someone can offer a solution.
(OS: Win7 Home Premium 64)
My computer had Eset Nod32 Antivirus for Win7 64-bit running at the time. All functions of my computer were running fine security-wise. During an Internet session Eset popped up saying it had blocked and quarrantined a Trojan. From that point on, all heck broke loose. I began receiving pop-ups on my desktop from something called "Windows 7 Security 2012". It would begin "running" a very official-looking antivirus scan, showing that I had hundreds of "bad stuff" on my computer. If I closed the window, I would get periodic other pop-ups with other warnings. These were all obviously fake, as the only options I was allowed to choose were "Continue at your own risk" or "Register the software".
I ran an "on demand" antivirus check of my entire computer using Eset. It identified 5 errors. The first one was a file called "b**.exe" in one of my C:/User folders. Eset identified the other 4 errors as "trojan" files in other locations. My apologies, but I did not write down the file names (thus, the asterisks above). At the end of the scan, Eset offered to delete the 4 Trojans, but did not list any action to take for the "b**.exe" file in my User's folder. I let Eset delete the 4 trojans. I manually deleted the "b**.exe" file myself, but then discovered I could not open ANY program using my desktop icons. I also could not open Windows Explorer. Attempts to do either resulted in the Windows "Which program do you want to use to open this file?" window popping up. So I restored the "b**.exe" file back to my User's folder, and my desktop icons and Windows Explorer "worked" again.
Immediately after that, the Eset icon in my taskbar turned red. I clicked on it and encountered the issue where the Security Center was turned off and I was unable to turn it on. Interstingly, my Control Panel Security Center now shows ONLY the Security Center block of info. There is nothing showing for my Windows Firewall or any other security options.
Also, Eset informed me that I was no longer protected for "web browsing" due to it's inability to monitor HTTP and POP activities. Using the Eset Advanced Settings options, the ability to turn this function back on was "greyed out", so I could not correct that problem in Eset either.
So I attempted to "fix" Eset by deleting the program, going to the Eset website to re-download my registered version of the program, and re-install it. Re-download worked fine. But I can not install it...it keeps saying "the computer has not been restarted since a program uninstall" (I tried several times AFTER an full reboot), or "unable to install at this time, please try again later."
I'm totally stuck right now. I'm not sure how long a single post can be here, so I am going to close this post now and continue with a second post that describes what I have tried so far from searching this forum. I will include log results, etc from what I got doing it. Please wait until I finish the second post, as it may save a lot of time recommending things I have already tried.
(To Be Continued)...
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And I'm still unable to "turn on Security Center" in the Control Panel.