Hey everyone, The other day I walked in the family room to find my sister yelling at the computer because it started to lock up then run fine for a couple of seconds than lock up again. I ran Ad-Aware and deleted 39 files, went to msconfig and killed a couple of startup programs and ran the disk cleanup wizzard on all accounts which freed up about 1.5Gig. The computer was running fine again so I left it alone and let it resume its dutys. Today I turned on the computer and I noticed that my desktop background had changed to an old one and when I went into my computer the left hand menu had dissapeard. The Horizontal dividers are also gone but they left a while agao. How do I get the menu to come back? Could all this trouble be a virus? I have no virus software. Cant afford it and the free stuff I know of sucks. If you want to see a screen shot of what I am talking about I have put one here: http://mattwizzsite.50megs.com/Stuffed.JPG Thanks for your help. Mattwizz3 : ) Sempron 2600+ OC 2.2GHz 1024Mb DDR400 2x80Gb 7200Rpm 8Mb nVIDIA FX5500 128Mb Damn Microsoft...

Mattwizz3, a virus is a possibility. A lot of them like to mess with the display in order to show what they like best. Personally, I use Avast! AV and it seems to be doing a good job. Perhaps its not and I'm just not sharp enough to know it? Anyway, there're a varity of free online scans available and IMHO, even the worst freebie AV HAS to be better than none at all. Free scans @: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Scanners.htm HTH. Ed in Texas.

I use these 5 free programs and I reccommend them to all my friends to use. 1) AVG anti virus 2) spywareblaster 3) spybot search and destroy 4) adawareSE 5) Ccleaner you can download them all from http://www.majorgeeks.com They work just as well as any paid for program. IN THE MATTERS OF STYLE, swim with the current; in matters of principle, STAND LIKE A ROCK Visit Computer Vitals For A Pleasant Surprise

To restore the left hand menu: My Computer > Tools > Folder Options General: Tasks: Show common tasks in folders

Thanks heaps guys. I dont know how that setting got changed. I will download some of the programs you reccommended and do an online virus scan. Finally everything is back again! Mattwizz3 : ) Sempron 2600+ OC 2.2GHz 1024Mb DDR400 2x512 2x80Gb 7200Rpm 8Mb nVIDIA FX5500 128Mb Dang Micro$oft...