I could not boot to a safe window with DOS. This was a real bugger virus. I could get to dos with a Win 98 start up disc but the damned virus somehow prevented you from accessing the Registry , Winini and Sysyini. Don't ask me how it was doing it.
I beat it by taking the hard drive out and putting it in a USB external eclosure. I then booted with it unplugged and plugged it in and quickly turned of an autorun that it had installed. Then I just ran the AV program and it cleaned it out. Trickiest virus I ever saw.
I then had to go back in and "unhook" the command prompt window with a program I got online . Once I had the command prompt (dos) window I typed in a line to only re-install the restore part of windows. WHAT A BITSH. That's about when I started thinking of cutting peoples fingers off!
Anyway , live and learn. The whole episode forced me back into a good habit of having a completely functional backup with boot capability and all the OS and program files working. Next time I just unplug the bad and install the good and Fdisk the virus infected drive and reclone the good system drive. Maybe a 1 hour deal instead of a ten day nightmare.