The icons have all dissappeared off of my desktop and when I right-click on it to unhide them, the right-click box doesn’t appear. Thanks to Catboy, I recently aquired a virus and I think either that’s what’s causing the problem or it’s somehow locked itself. I’ve gotten rid of the virus but I still can’t fix my desktop. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance!
Contact Microsoft Customer Support
Delete the C drive in frustration
Catboy sharing his warez?
Try the XP PowerToys
TweakUI has a feature to repair the desktop icons and other Explorer (shell) settings.
Thanks John, but still doesn’t work. Catboy didn’t really give me the virus but I’m still blaming him.
I like that attitude. Whatever it is, I’m sure Catboy could have been at fault.
I don’t have any experience actually cleaning a computer. I’ve never been in front of a computer that had a virus or spyware infection. I don’t even know how to accidentally get infected (I could do it intentionally, but why?).
There’s some spyware info here
and virus info here
If you’ve cleaned the computer and the only problem is the desktop and profile problems then you can probably fix it by creating a new profile in XP (a new user account) and then moving your favorites, documents and other profile settings to the new profile. Once everything is moved and you’re happy that you’ve moved everything then delete the old profile.
throw your computer out the window. 
He asked for a keygen for some softawre so he could use it illegally, I told him NEVER to DL a keygen thet you can Google search because 90% of the time they are wicked trojans, and if they really are keygen’s they probably wont work.
What does he do? DL a trojan right off the bat on a site I told him had some keys and keygens(Even after explainging to him the risks and lamenesses of trojans).
In that case he gets what he deserves.
You can’t clean up after a trojan like that. The trojans are getting nasty. It is common for them to have rootkits now which hide deep within the bowels of the OS. They’re designed to hide even from expert removal and detection. The only way to clean up after exposing the computer to wipe the hard drive completely and reinstall the OS from scratch.
Seriously, TheoELind needs to wipe the computer clean and reinstall the OS from scratch. That’s the only way to clean the computer. Otherwise you can never know if the computer is owned with a rootkit. You’ll never be able to trust entering your credit card number or doing online banking or doing your taxes or anything else that involves entering private information (especially of a financial nature). Face it, the computer is owned. You can’t clean up after an unknown trojan. You can’t scan for them with a virus scanner. You can’t clean them up with Adware or Spybot or any other tool. Pwned.
Warez are risky stuff. Always have been, but it’s worse now. The nasties that you can catch from trojans are worse (rootkits). The frequency of trojan infected warez is higher.
If you’re going to play with warez you need to dedicate a specific computer to the task and wall that computer off from the rest of the home network. Use that computer only for warez and always assume that the computer is owned. Never use that computer for shopping, banking, taxes, personal info, or anything else of that nature. If you know what you’re doing you can play with your warez inside of a virtual machine like VMware, but even then you’d have to know what you’re doing to avoid infecting your PC.
An owned computer is no longer your computer. The person who infected your computer can do anything they want. They can remote control your PC, they can see everything you do on the desktop, they can see what passwords you type, the can see your bank numbers, they can see your SSN, they can install additional software, they can turn your computer into a spam zombie, they can use your computer as part of a DDOS attack, they can store files on your computer and share those file out (P2P style, FTP style, or whatever), they can use your bandwidth. If you’re lucky they’ll only turn your computer into a spam zombie.
I didn’t download it, it installed itself. Luckilly I knew something was wrong and was able to delete it emediatly before it installed more stuff. And the key worked, so it’s win win except for the desktop. I still blame Catboy.
This is just funny - “If you forget about the fact that I’m having problems, everthing is great!” 
Get ubuntu, use automatix to install all the essentials, such as media codecs and wine. And you have a working system that supports most likely all your ware, and is less prone to getting viruses or malware.
So my desktop reappeared last week. It’s all good. I can’t explain it, I just signed in and there it was. The computer’s just fucking with me. Bastard.
you probably wouldnt have this problem if you just used a mac
Can you install a trojan on a Mac?
Are you able to install any software at all on a Mac?
Any operating system (well most any) that allows you to install software is going to be vulnerable to trojans. Running a keygen that has a surprise in it is a trojan horse. It is not a virus. Macs are vulnerable to trojans and rootkits. Look around in the Mac warez groups. I’m sure you can find a trojanized Mac file there.
Tons. But there are more choices for PCs.
If you look hard enough I’m sure you can find some. But they aren’t the same ones on the average warez site, and they aren’t attached to any common keygen files. In other words, for the most part, nobody is writing trojans for Macs, other than to prove a point. If the platform continues to increase in popularity and marketshare, this will probably change. But so far we’re still running a virus/malware ratio of about 1,400,000:1 in the field.
But don’t discount all that stuff JC said above. It’s not that your PC is owned, but it may be. Acting fixed now changes none of that. It would be a bad idea for your to do any online purchasing or otherwise typing your personal information into anything on that machine until you wipe it as JC said. And if you’re not running a security suite, or an anti-virus and anti spyware/malware software, you’re just asking for more.
Who said Macs were expensive? Don’t forget to add the cost of all that security software that doesn’t come with your PC…
Microsoft customer support i didn’t know they existed 
Apple Macs are the best 
I don’t run a security suite or spyware software. It’s not necessary if you practice safe hex.
I do occasionally activate a virus scanning program, but most of the time I leave it disabled (they’re annoying when enabled). I occasionally run a scan for spyware, but the scans always come up empty.
I do have a router for the Internet connection that includes a basic NAT style firewall in it. That stops any random scans from probing my ports for possible vulnerabilities. I sometimes also run a software firewall, but the software firewall has very little to do since the Internet router catches everything first.
Home users can get all the anti-virus and anti-spyware they need for free. Business users have to pay since most of the free stuff is only licensed to be free for home users and not business users. Avast! and AVG are two free (for home use) anti-virus programs. Windows XP has a built in basic software firewall. There are also other free software firewalls (for home use) like Zone Alarm and others.
Spyware checkers like Adaware and Spybot are also free for home use.
The only thing that costs money for a home user is a router that includes a basic firewall, and you can get those for under $50 now. It’s crazy to connect to the net without one, whether you have a PC, Mac, or Linux.
The problem is that a lot of the administration and security for a computer requires knowledge that most people don’t have. Most people don’t care either.
Lots of the spyware gets installed voluntarily by the user and not by virus methods or drive-by-downloads. People want a P2P app, chat program, weather watcher program or other utility and don’t care if it happens to include spyware or whether they are downloading it from a legitimate source. That’s not a security hole that can be easily fixed. A user on any operating system that is able to install something, and doesn’t care whether it may be a trojan or have unhealthy effects for the computer is a hazard no matter what the OS.
People need to understand that if they cannot trust the developer or distributor of the software to physically sit at your computer without messing it up then you shouldn’t install their software. If you can’t trust the developer or the code or the distributor to actually sit at your computer and do whatever they want then you can’t trust their software. It’s a simple test that avoids most spyware and malware.
Thats right they are.