SD - thanks - I will try to get him to see if sys32 is in the path. GG - thanks. At least we can boot reliably into safe and normal now.
For both, from the first post,
"Try to expand same from CD using 'run' box 'cmd'. Cannot find rundll32.exe. As far as I can see 'run' looks for the first cmd it can find, starting in the profile folder?? Next task willl be to see if there is a zero-byte cmd there."
No further copies of cmd found, but since rd32 is so pivotal in all of this, I cannot find a way to run 'cmd'. Will command.com produce a DOS box? Any other way to run regsvr? Have not tried that in the run box but I suspect it will cough up the same problem. All a bit of a challenge over the phone. I dare not put him online for a remote access until I can be sure the av and firewall are ok - that is if we can even go online! I have asked a local friend of his to download the 'dougknow' exe file fix zip to a USB in the hope we can fix the exe files go to 'open with...' rd32 problem.
As I said, we got into regedit using 'run as' and unticking the 'protect my computer....' box and as far as I can see there is no sign of antimalware there, but I don't know what I am looking for for the rd32 issue. Control panel modules also unavailable due to rd32 issue.