WINDOWS 98 2nd Ed. On removing the software from an ISP, who shall remain nameless, the invoking icon was left orphaned on the desktop. Being a system file, like My Computer and the Recycle Bin, it cannot be removed by deleting or dragging and dropping it into the latter. The ISP' technical support team has no idea how to remove it (at least, every promise, secured at £1 per minute, has failed to produce any result.) and the original software cannot be reinstalled, in order to try another uninstall, because it now throws up a certificate violation and is, in case, so unfriendly to other installed ISP software that the trouble it causes is worse than living with the current difficulty. (In any case, I suspect that the ISP no longer supports it, after the fiasco of its launch deal, which fell apart in a welter of broken promises.) After a great deal of fiddling, Windows 98 has finally suggested that the offending icon can be removed with cmstp.exe but, to do this, the full profile path has to be supplied – which would be fine if there were some way of discovering what it is called and where it is to be found. The uninstall utility supplied with the offending ISP software left not only the icon marooned but also a trail of debris scattered throughout the registry and elsewhere. That has been removed with Regedit and Windows Explorer so that no further references to the ISP can now be found either in the registry or in any other accessible files – but the desktop icon remains. Meanwhile, the Windows 98 Resource Kit has not been very helpful (but might be had I some idea where to look in its 1760 or so pages). Anyone got any bright ideas, or do I allow Mr. Gates to cut one more notch in the headboard of his bed?

Do you have a registry copy that older than the date you installed the nameless software? Win 98 keeps rb (reg backup) files for 4 days. If so, boot to a dos prompt & type: scanreg /restore & replace it. Well?

I take it running a full scandisk didn't work? Have you tried right-clicking the offending icon to see if any target information remains or if its properties as a "system file" can be unchecked? Also, since only the icon remains, have you tried using "Find" to locate the path of the icon (*.ico) itself and then deleting it from the appropriate folder in Windows Explorer? Also, also, you might want to call up MSCONFIG (type MSCONFIG in RUN) and see if there are any references in the INI files, startup groups, etc. Good Luck

Start Regedit Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ explorer \ Desktop \ NameSpace Below that should be a few keys Delete the orphan.

Thanks for the suggestions, which have resulted in some success - sadly not total though. No luck with the registry back-up. The software has been in far too long. Right clicking the icon and selecting virtually any option results in the message, "The Service Profile is damaged. Reinstall the Service Profile." This, of course, cannot be done for the reasons stated earlier. Scandisk had nothing to offer (tried that one some time ago!) and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.........NameSpace only yielded "My Documents", "Recycle bin" and "Setup MSN Internet Access" - no sign of the orphan, I'm afraid. The *.ico search looked, at one stage, like being the key to it all. The icon was found, together with other associated redundant folders and files, masquerading under aliases in Windows/All Users/Application data/Microsoft/Connections/Cm. When these were deleted, the rogue icon disappeared from the desktop but, sadly, only to be replaced by the blank folder icon (cf Online Services). Right clicking on this gives the same messages as before and it is, like the rogue icon, undeletable, producing instead the reference to Connection Manager. It therefore looks as if whatever installs My Computer and the other fixed system icons on the desktop is still insisting on loading the orphan. Because that icon has now been deleted, however, it is loading a default blank folder icon instead. I have searched the registry with the newly discovered aliases but to no avail. If I could discover what loads the system icons to the Desktop and inhibit the loading of the now-deleted icon, perhaps I might be able to get rid of the damned thing but it is obvously not going to be defeated that easily. Does the above help anyone to come up with some more bright ideas? At least the score now looks more like Bill Gates 5 / PeeGee 2, thanks to you guys. That is a significant improvement on the 5/0 defeat I came in with.