Malicious Software Removal Tool in Win10 Home won't run

Greetings RikDatta,

Some of this material is redundant, but you should familiarize yourself with it anyway, until we find a solution to your administrator recognition problem.

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http://www.intowindows.com/enable-the-hidden-administrator-account-in-windows-10/.

Richard offered some good suggestions in his last post.  Try it out by right clicking your desktop mrt.exe file... selecting properties and following his instructions from there.  This could be the solution...but I'm not certain yet.  

Solving computer problems can be tedious, with a lot of home work... huh?  Update me on your progress.

Later,

Wayne

Hi Wayne,

Thanks, it does sound to me more like it may be a problem with the permissions assigned to that file or perhaps a corruption within the file itself. If the permissions settings look to be correct, and it has not been tried already, perhaps a SFC and/or a DISM run can set things straight. They do have limitations therefor they don't always accomplish the needed repair(s) but in some circumstances one or the other, or both done in sequence together, do.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows_10-update/system-file-check-sfc-scan-and-repair-system-files/bc609315-da1f-4775-812c-695b60477a93

To my knowledge the system administrator account should only be activated as a last resort for difficult troubleshooting purposes only and then be deactivated again promptly when finished with said troubleshooting as this is a security layer in and of itself. (It is also a separate account in and of and unto itself).

It occurred to me after you had mentioned that the OP resided in London that perhaps his (and his son's) Windows installation might be the N version of Windows 10, could this be a contributing factor here?

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Windows-10-Windows-10-KN-Windows-10-N-and-Windows-10-Single-Language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_editions

Hi Wayne,

It would be best to check the file that resides in the system32 folder as well. The desktop located entity can either be a copy of the sys.32 file or just a shortcut to it depending on how it was placed on the desktop. The 2 of course can also be compared to each other. (If the desktop entity is indeed a copy it would/should be a newly written entry on the HDD in a new place on it even if/as it was saved to the same system drive/partition, a shortcut would be just that, not a new copy of the file itself). The intermittent nature of it running one time but not before and after is indeed puzzling, is it time for a disk integrity scan? But then the OP stated that his son's device showed the same behavior. Hmmm....

Perhaps RikDatta and or others would also find the below links to be of interest.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/malicious-software-removal-tool-details.aspx?id=16

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/890830/remove-specific-prevalent-malware-with-windows-malicious-software-removal-tool#releaseinfo

The MSRT blog page, a lot of interesting info will be found here, (especially if your into such things).

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/category/msrt/

Richard, RikDatta,

Thanks Richard for your excellent information.  RikDatta will explore the integrity of his shortcut mrt.exe desktop file and his WinFile 32 location of the same file for corruption and replacement. 

I am unaware if RikDatta has performed a sfc /scannow   , dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth. and a chkdsk /f  as of yet, all to rule out file and disk corruptions.  If not as yet, please do.

User Account Controls (UAC) in the control panel, has a sliding gauge adjusterworth lowering a notch,, to determine if this has an effect upon administrator permissions.... if this has not been tried already....  found in "Change user account control settings".  

Carpe diem,

Wayne