restoring OS from recovery disk ...

A friend who is a senior citizen and not all that computer literate has an
all-HP system ... I think it is a P3-833 or so. He has let his Norton NAV
expire a few months ago ...

Anyway, last time I was at his place he asked if I could "fix the icons" on
the screen. The screen for some reason was in VGA mode and was filled with
icons. Even the task bar has links and shortcuts to Word docs ! I had never
seen this before. Deleting or moving them to a folder on the desktop just
causes more and more shortcuts and icons to appear !

I suspect a virus and am thinking that in any case it may be time to
"refresh" his Windows ME operating system. What should I do? I beleive I
saw an HP Recovery disk at his place. I would like to back up his data onto
CDR's ... but if there is a virus that may not be a good idea ! I would
like to back up and basically blow away everything on the hard disk and
install all from scratch.

But what sequence should I do? clean out the viruses first?

Thanks !

-RS-

First do a free (web-based) Symantec virus scan (let us know if you
can not find it on their site). Then you know whether or not there is a
virus.

Next look in the directories which contain the Desktop and Taskbar
entries, to see if there are just loads and loads of them.

RS <> wrote:
> A friend who is a senior citizen and not all that computer literate has an
> all-HP system ... I think it is a P3-833 or so. He has let his Norton NAV
> expire a few months ago ...
>
> Anyway, last time I was at his place he asked if I could "fix the icons" on
> the screen. The screen for some reason was in VGA mode and was filled with
> icons. Even the task bar has links and shortcuts to Word docs ! I had never
> seen this before. Deleting or moving them to a folder on the desktop just
> causes more and more shortcuts and icons to appear !
>
> I suspect a virus and am thinking that in any case it may be time to
> "refresh" his Windows ME operating system. What should I do? I beleive I
> saw an HP Recovery disk at his place. I would like to back up his data onto
> CDR's ... but if there is a virus that may not be a good idea ! I would
> like to back up and basically blow away everything on the hard disk and
> install all from scratch.
>
> But what sequence should I do? clean out the viruses first?
>
> Thanks !
>
> -RS-

hi,
you could try housecall online scanner . go to
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/hous...start_corp.asp
if your friend feels updating the norton is too expensive you could
use avast free version . zone alarm also has an excellent firewall
available free .
hope this helps,
terry

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