major problem!

[karlos]

could anyone shed some light on a little problem i am having with my PC? yesterday i fired her up (to check out my new 1meg broadband connection) and she started loading up ad-aware 6 as it does on every start up but crashed! i restarted it and it seemed to fire up ok but then i noticed all my shortcuts on my desktop were displayed with an icon i did'nt recognise. i clicked on 1 of these shortcuts to see what happened and it just came up with a messege telling me the file was'nt recognised by windows! i thought this was very strange so investigater further and found all shortcut in my start menu had changed to this icon too! ive been through everything and i cant get any programs to work (including system restore) except by right clicking a shortcut and choosing wich program to open the file with. the list includes explorer, media player notebook and things like that. i realy have no idea what has gone on and would be very gratefull if someone could help me out with this as re-installing windows meens losing alot of work, pictures and such! look forward to hearing from anyone.

regards karlos

 

[Sypher04]

Sounds like a virus that one of my friends had just recently, it entered his computer and deleted all programs..left him with nothing but Windows. The issue may have nothing to do with the new hardware you just installed

Are any of the program files still on the computer?

If, No. then i would say that you should try to re-install all your programs before doing anything like a system format.

Let me know what happens...

 

[darkd3vil]

hmmmm we had that once, try to run somthing like cwshreder or hijackthis i believe thats how we got rid of it i dont remember we have so many virus's

 

[Praetor]

Sounds like a virus to me too although a reinstallation/format doesnt mean lost work: you just need ot save it beforehand