Uhm... Where'd the Start button go?

[Drusilla]

Not just Start... everything along the bottom of the screen and everything on the desktop as well... just kind of goes 'poof!' randomly. I do know that my idiot little brother tried to download some "free" software over the summer while I was gone, and that's when the adware started popping up. The whole computer seems to be infested with adware and trojans now. Any advise on how to remove it? I keep my own computer well protected, so I don't have to worry about it myself...

My dad's probably going to wipe the harddrive and leave it unplugged for a while to reset all the numbers, but if there's anything I could do in the meantime, I'd appreciate any tips people have. This computer is my only way to get online right now... HELP!

[woz]

right click on taskbar at the bottom of the screen -> Properties -> uncheck 'Auto-hide the taskbar' -> click OK

[Drusilla]

The taskbar isn't there, either. Everything is gone. The desktop seems to revert to a mere image for me; nothing that I right-click on responds. Anything that I have minimized disappears, too, as I just found out... This isn't some setting, this is something seriously wrong. I'm thinking that maybe it's a virus, because it's been happening rather constantly when I open up IE (which I hate... I might try to install Firefox on this thing) and try to load TPM. I don't know what effect other sites would have, and I'll probably check that out after I restart here in a few. It's just that when I get online, this is the first place I usually come to.

[-/Deathborn/-]

First of all, UNINSTALL what your little brother put on. Install Ad-Aware (really good malware finder:the free version finds things a $40 program missed) and do a full scan. It will take a while. Mine took 2 1/2 hours and it found a ton of stuff to get rid of.

If all else fails, system restore to before your brother installed whatever it is he downloaded off the internets.

EDIT: In fact, be as cruel as to unintstall ANYTHING on the Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs page that has not been used in a while and/or serves no purpose except to take up space, and looks suspicous in any way. Update your computer once this is all over. Perferably order an XP SP2 disc from Microsoft.