Recovering from the XP Recovery infection

This infection has been everywhere recently.

After getting the system cleaned and unhiding your Desktop, My Documents and Favorites you may still be missing most of your start menu shortcuts… They can be found in a folder named smtmp inside:

(XP)- C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Temp
(W7)- C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Temp

You might see a few numbered folders inside smtmp. One is for the items in All Users\Start Menu folder, one is quick launch items and one is the desktop item

You should see shortcut icons inside them. You should see a long list of folders in one of the three numbered folders. This would be your start menu. Just copy and paste that long list of folders to the right location

I have had this problem In my case there were three numbered folders inside C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Temp\smtmp folder. The folders were numbered 1, 2 and 4.

Inside the 1 folder was a folder named “Programs.” This folder should be copied / pasted to (using XP) to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu, which will already have a folder named Programs but it is safe to overwrite it since Windows will replace the subfolders without creating duplicates.

Inside the 2 folder (for me) were the quick launch items specific for the user. Select ALL of these shortcuts and copy / paste to (using XP) C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch.

Inside the 4 folder were the desktop items that should be copied to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop.