I use windows xp and I have been battling spy and adware constantly, using Ad-Aware. Recently, I did a scan and deleted everything the scan found, as I had always done before then. When I restarted, I got a message saying that "bridge.dll" was missing; I also noticed that there was a little toolbar in my taskbar that was a "Search Assistant". I presumed this was spyware as well and tried to delete its files, through ad-aware and otherwise. Trouble is, the toolbar still keeps coming up, and my quick launch buttons are constantly shuffled around in order, even after I rearrange them and restart (which usually saves your settings for good).
My question is: do you think spyware is still at work here, or is there a Windows problem about saving my settings and preferences as far as keeping my quick launch icons in order and keeping that Search Assistant toolbar off the taskbar.
By the way, the SearchAssistant toolbar looks like the search field in the google toolbar with a little button saying search, almost as if it were a webpage searcher. For hahas, I did a search for something on it and immediately I ran Ad-aware to find 129 new files of spyware on my pc.
HELP!!! Thanks so much in advance.
My question is: do you think spyware is still at work here, or is there a Windows problem about saving my settings and preferences as far as keeping my quick launch icons in order and keeping that Search Assistant toolbar off the taskbar.
By the way, the SearchAssistant toolbar looks like the search field in the google toolbar with a little button saying search, almost as if it were a webpage searcher. For hahas, I did a search for something on it and immediately I ran Ad-aware to find 129 new files of spyware on my pc.
HELP!!! Thanks so much in advance.
a) the bridge.dll was really important (unlikely) or (b) there is still more spywhere left on the system