for my windows me, for some reason, every time i try to open a file in internet explorer that begins with the letter "B", it comes up to this repeated boston.com URL about sweatshops, of all things. when i've deleted my history in the past, all of the other URL's disappear. why is this one repeatedly staying?

dan, SWAG, sounds to me like the work of a nasty of some sort. Suspect you have an interrupt checking for filenames beginning with 'B' and if it's detected you get the popup. Be aware that ME and XP both have a feature called 'Restore'. A nasty (virus, spyware, etc) can hide there and since it is a 'Windows' file, Windows won't allow any alteration so long as it is active. The registry gets re-written on the next bootup and the last successful boot is used and since nasties don't count, the boot appears to be sucessful, thus a 'nasty' gets replicated. The solution is simple (assuming that's the problem), TEMPORARILY disable Restore (in order to 'unprotect'), scan/clean, re-enable restore and try again. May have to reboot. During the disable process, you will destroy ALL your restore points in XP, thus some folks disagree with that fix, feeling that any restore point (even a corrupted one!) is better than none at all. You can sidestep that pitfall by creating a new restore point as soon as you have a clean machine (applies to XP only). FWIW, I have used it on both ME & XP Pro with no lasting ill effects. HTH. Ed in Texas.

Anyone see Sling Blade? In the words of Carl.. "it aint got any gas". Have you verified that this boston url isnt in your favorites? About a year ago or so i thought i had a similar problem.. seein' as how i aint too brite :) I tried everything i could think of to get the URL cleared and then i realized i had it saved as a favorite and IE6 was throwing it at me. Im prolly' way off.. ill scoot on out of here.. Yall be good!

ed, thanks for the help. though i consider myself computer savvy, i think you've gone a bit over my head. how do i temporarily disable restore? i'm pretty sure i understand all else, but that's confusing me still. thanks again. dan

You also might want to delete all index.dat files in DOS. c:\windows\cookies c:\windows\tempor~1 c:\windows\history Or Download Delindex 5.1 and try it.