Controlling the Panel

Q: When I try to get to my Control Panel, it opens showing a flashlight looking for it and then shuts off. I have a new Dell computer. No message appears. The only thing that shows is the flashlight moving back and forth searching for the Control Panel contents. A friend helped install a firewall. At first, there was no problem, and then the control panel wouldn't come back so my friend came over again. The problem started about 1-2 months ago. I appreciate any help that you can offer.
P. Jensen
A: Very few things can be as annoying as being denied access to your own property. We are going to explore several options to determine how to rectify your situation. Since the firewall is the only thing that you have knowingly installed on your computer, it is here that we will start. Disable the firewall and try to open the control panel. If it works then this will be one of my shortest articles. If it doesn’t then we can explore some other avenues.
Next, let’s go to www.symantec.com and have your hard drive scanned for known viruses. You will be asked to download a couple of programs so reply yes when asked if you want to install them. The scan will take about 10-20 minutes. If this does not pan out then we will go to www.lavasoftusa.com or some other website where we get free adware and spyware detection programs. Just a side note, insufficient user privileges for the account that is being used could also deny access to certain areas. You normally would see a message notifying you of insufficient privileges, but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure that you have administer privileges.
At this point, we will start the computer in safe mode and attempt to open the control panel. This is with the firewall still disabled. Additional options are to perform a system restore to a point when you know that you had no problems. Although we have scanned for viruses, spyware, and other malicious programs and found nothing that does not mean that they do not exist. We could be facing something that is new or not yet detected. Therefore, if we restore to a previous point it is not uncommon for the malady to continue, depending upon where it is located. Fortunately, you can circumvent the problem in some situations like this. First, we press CTRL ALT DEL. Instead of shutting down the computer we are going to click the button name Task Manager. Once we are in Task Manager, we are going to select the Processes tab at the top of the dialog box. Next we are going to look for Conime.exe. If we see this then we will click it, click the End Process button, click Yes, and then close the dialog box. This is only a temporary fix until it can be removed. Conime.exe is a backdoor remote system administration program. One of the options provided should be successful.