Tor executable file location not found on startup and new file folders created in TBB directory not part of installation

Question

Yesterday I tried to start TBB and got a message saying that the executable file could not be found. I clicked the link in Vidalia settings and it shows the the location for the exe file being in program files when I had saved the TBB directory on my desktop. I uninstalled tor and reinstalled using same zip file. It worked fine.

Today same problem occured again. I looked at the TBB folder and noticed that a new folder had been created at around the same time I attempted to start tor. The file path created was C:\users\xxxxxx\Desktop\Torbrowser\App\**Data\Vidalia\torrc** I also noticed that 20 minutes later a desktop.ini file appeared which read

[ViewState]
Mode=
Vid=
FolderType=Generic

Could anybody help to explain this problem? This information may also be relevant today I noticed that my pagefile.sys has disappeared and also recently I fakeflash trojan (fakeadobe.zusy according to spybot) among other malware issues and have been running a lot of different malware removal and registry repair software without the proper knowledge to do so,(but im not totally clueless) so I'm hoping that these mystery files are a result of a damaged registry and not something more sinister

Answer 1

Your problem seems not Tor-related. As you wrote your system was/is infected with malware which can do arbitrarily bad things with your machine. In the first place you should save all your important data, reformat and reinstall your machine. This is the only safe way to remove any malware. When you are done, you can download and use Tor Browser Bundle without those issues.

Answer 2

Well... if you've had malware running around and things going missing, just try your original fix: extract it again, see if it works okay this time. If it does, you can probably write it off as a malware problem. Make sure you don't extract the .zip file in the same place without deleting the old folder, and make sure you're using an up-to-date TBB. Also, I've known certain combinations of browser addons to prevent it from starting.