Computer Help Please!!!

J

Jcrew3082

Cathlete
Wow am I ever frustrated. My sister is home from college and used my computer this morning. She pays no attention to important things, and now there are a bunch of new desktop icons. They are links to travel, poker, bingo, and all of these ridiculous things. She said she didn't put them there, and she probably didn't. I sometimes get pop-ups from Internet Explorer that leave new icons on the desktop. I always delete them right away. However, now I cannot delete these items. If I left click, I am taken to gambling sites on IE. If I right click, nothing happens, no drop down menu. I tried to search the computer for files with these names, run ad-aware, virus scan, and cleanup the desktop. Nothing is working. Does anyone know how to get rid of these?

Thanks in advance!!!
 
Gina...not a PC genuis....but check in add and remove programs thru the control panel and look for anything you don't know and remove it. Check out this site that is a free program for not letting spyware download on your PC...http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/ It is called Spyware Blaster and I love it. Hope this helps til some other techies reply...:)...Carole
 
Go to Yahoo and download their Yahoo toolbar with Spyware protection.

It will add another small line to your browser display. If you press the spyware button, it will scan your drive and advise you on how to remove all the spyware.

Been awhile since I had to do this so you might have to explore but all of your desktop programs are in a folder called desktop, (on my computer it is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop) every icon on your desktop is in that folder.

You can delete them from there. If this doesn't work get back to us.

Dave
 
Thanks Carole and Dave.

By the way, Carole, good luck with the marathon!!!

Well, I've tried spyware removal through a spyware program and through my Anti-virus software's spyware feature. Didn't work. I also tried looking into the desktop. Oddly enough, all of my "normal" icons appear and can be changed, but the new ones don't appear at all.

Thank you for your help. I'm going to keep fiddling around lol.
 
Sometimes you can type the program's name and "remove" or "manually remove" in the search box and find specific instructions for completely deleting bad programs. These instructions will show you how to edit the registry and get rid of the program completely, since some programs leave things on your computer even after you remove them through Add/Remove Programs.

Shari
 
Unfortunately I'm at my work computer so I can't be absolute sure of the path - but you should be able to go through Windows Exporer and look at (and delete) the file names of what you have on your desktop (assuming you have windows).

It could be in one of two places:
1) Open windows explorer and open the folder "Desktop and Settings" then go to "All Users" or your specific user name, then open "Desktop" and it should list everything you see on your desktop. Here you can highlight the links and delete them.

2) Open windows explorer and open the folder WINNT (or whichever folder corresponds to the platform your computer is running on) - then go to the Profiles folder - then All Users (or your user name) - Then there should be a folder called "Desktop" - then same as above.

If you have trouble finding the desktop folder you can always search on your C: drive for "Desktop"

Hope this helps -
 
It sounds like you have tons of adware and spyware on your PC but beware not ALL programs for adware will remove them, I know I have tried about 4 differant programs and none of them worked for me, they might have removed maybe one or two but that is all, I still have 14 on my computer that I can't get rid of unless I re-install my windows.
If you are running XP you can do a restore to an earlier date. You can go back to the day before all that happened and you won't loose anything before that date. But you have to act quick on it though because windows XP will only let you do it for a month or two back is all.
 
Hi Gina,

I have a site for students with links to some of the major spyware/scumware removal tools. It's at www.castleton.edu/security/. Maybe there's something there that'll help get rid of what you got.

Do you have Windows XP? Can you restore your system back to a clean restore point? Might be another option...

I'd also recommend switching from IE to Mozilla Firefox (no pop-ups), after your system gets cleaned up.

Good luck!
 
I do agree strongly to switching to Mozilla Firefox, I have used it for some time and I thinks its faster than IE and yes..NO POP-UPS!!!!!!!...:)...Carole
 
Thank you so much, everyone for your help. I ended up calling Dell, and they guided me through a system restore. No more weird icons! I us AOL as my primary browser but use Mozilla too. I like it so much better than IE. I completely uninstalled IE from my computer, but occasionally, while on AOL, I get IE pop ups. More weirdness!

Thank you again so very much! I hope you all have a Happy New year!
 
one of the best programs for removing spyware is adaware. which you can find at www.lavasoft.de

the problem with downloading most 'toolbars', yahoo and google included, is that they say they remove spyware and all that, but they actually *are* spyware. anyway, adaware is awesome and will clean your computer of stuff that you can't even find to remove. use it in conjunction with antivirus and you'll be set.
 
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