Problem with system32/drivers/atapi.exe on windows7

[ikhassan]

Hello guys

A friend introduced me to this forum that if i was going to get help anywhere, you guys are the best.
I reside in Nigeria, in Africa and just got myself a laptop. I just installed AVG and it detected that i have a trojan (trojan horse rootkit-pakes.u)affecting my atapi.exe in windows/system32/drivers/atapi

AVG says it is whitelisted and can't remove it. The trojan makes my system slow, sometimes goes into blue screen and mosttimes i go into google, it shuts down the webpage and re-opens it.

Please help. dunno what to do. not very good with computer technicalities.
Hope you guys find time out of your busy shedule and give a helping hand here.

IK

[windows_user]

Welcome to TechAreana. First of all I want to inform you that Atapi.exe is an device driver. It is used on older Windows system. This file is responsible to run your CD drive. If you remove it or delete the same, you will not able able to access your CD drive. You can simply ignore the same. This is not a virus. AVG is detecting this as infection, because there are some viruses which has a similar name. For the blue screen, you can mention the error message that is shown on your screen. Post the same here. The error shows you the exact problem in your system. Just keep scanning your system at the end of every week.

[ikhassan]

Thanks for the fast response. Are you certain the atapi.exe trojan infection is just an AVG "thing"? and not serious?. My PC Tools - Spydoctor and Hitman Pro also detects the same problem.

Anyway, the blue screen just happened again - this is the error message -
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 1000007e
BCP1: C0000005
BCP2: 94DA279E
BCP3: 8931B618
BCP4: 8931B1F0
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\011811-43867-01.dmp
C:\Users\WEBAD\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-140369-0.sysdata.xml

[zohm]

There should be NO ".EXE" files in "%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\"
only ".SYS" files!

There is a file called "atapi.exe" made by Microsoft, but this is an archived
driver made for "Windows NT4".

Inside of the archive are amongst others "atapi.sys"

Reboot computer in safemode and delete it ("atapi.exe").
It most certainly a trojan.

Then install "Avast AV".

Good luck