Help with security center issue

[Sophy]

I am working on a little HP net book for a friend, trying to clear off some of the junk her grandson put on. Anyway, Windows Security Center Service will not start. I have Googled this quite a bit. One bit of advice everyone gives is to open Services and make sure the Security Center is set to auto. The problem is, Security Center does not even appear in Services.

She has Windows 7 32 bit on this machine. I installed Microsoft Security Essentials for her and she also has Malwarebytes.

I'm not really a techie anyway, but almost am compared to her and thought I could help her out with getting her grandson's junk cleaned off. If anyone can help me I would sure appreciate it. I'm about ready to pull my hair completely out!!!

After I had deleted upteen tool bars and such, I ran a scan with Malwarebytes and it found 197 objects with infections. Most were from My Web Search, with a couple of Vundos. It took three scans but I finally got the infections cleaned off I think. I did two more scans that turned up clean. Then I scanned with Microsoft Security Essentials and it showed nothing. I also did a scan with Avast before removing it to replace it with MSE and it showed no viruses.

I can't think of any more information to give.

[Tripredacus]

It not showing up in Services CPL could be a problem. Some viruses will do things to Security center, such as replace it. IIRC all it is a shortcut for the three options:

- Monitor antivirus

- Automatic Updates

- Firewall

You can get to Updates and Firewall from Control Panel as well. But do this test from CMD to see if you can start Security Center:

net start wscsvc

See what it reports back. Also check Event Viewer (Application) for anything relating to Security Center or the above service name.

[Sophy]

Right now I am installing a couple of security-related updates. I keep checking Windows Update and it keeps coming up with things. It takes forever because that machine is working so slowly. I have used CCleaner and there is nothing more available on her machine to use. Can you advise of anything that I could use on this system that might speed it up some?

As soon as these updates are done I will run that command and let you know what happened.

Thanks for answering and holding out some hope for me.

---------------- What I got through that CMD was "More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 2185."

So I typed that and it said "???" is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file..

The reason I put in the question marks is because I can not read what id says. It almost looks like some kind of a symbol and then a capitol T at the end. I'm going to take a snapshot on that net book and post to you through it so I can attach it.

Edited August 3, 2011 by Sophy

[Sophy]

I am in now through the net book. Please see my snapshot.

[MagicAndre1981]

run sfc /scannow in the command prompt to see damaged system files.

Also run regedit.exe and look here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\wscsvc

What do you see there?

[Tripredacus]

Something is definately corrupted. The real error you got was "The service name is invalid" but the presence of those ASCII characters reveals there are larger problems on Windows that should be looked at, and hopefully after fixing them, Security Center will work again.

[Sophy]

Funny thing is that I did run sfc /scannow and it found no errors, which greatly puzzled me.

But in any event, my friend has all of her important stuff on her laptop, so I found and used the Factory Image Restore feature on this because I figured it was too far gone to bring it back to any decent working order. I knew she would not want to haul it 100 miles away to the nearest computer shop and pay the price.

She now has a fresh palatte that her grandson will most likely mess up again. : (

Speaking of Restore, that's another problem I discovered. System Restore wouldn't run.

Thank you for your help!!!