icons gone

[tyrantfour]

when i started my machine today all my icons were gone. they have been replaced by this icon that looks like a white rectangle with the windows on it. when i try to open one of theese files, it says that the program was removed or is unacessible...
what in the world could have happened? a lot of files are like this now but not all of them. there is no pattern, i mean its not only games, its got games, web links, pic links, microsoft word and notepad, picture viewer, dvd programs, and yahoo messenger.

During boot up i get a few messeges:

after i put in my pw:

Windows error!
Error Code #5, can not open this file, please download again

hpfsched
acces to the specified device, path, or file is denied.

Desktop
Could not load or run 'hpfsched' specified in the WIN.INI file. Make sure the file exists on your computer or remove the refference to it in the WIN.INI file.

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
Programs: C:\Program files\Yahoo!\Messenger\YPager.exe
This application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please Contact the applications support team for mor information.


and then i get the old illegal opperation for the ypager file. i believe that is my yahoo mesenger. anybody have any ideas?

i just found out i cant open the properties for internet explorer or open the control panel. i can get the main window open but i tried to click on add/remove and it says that ive been denied access it does it on every icon

[Lardass]

Have you tinkered with any of the computer's setting prior to this error. Just from reading your problem I would say it would be a virus. Did you have any updated AV software running prior to this problem?

[tyrantfour]

no the only av i use is windows media player, but i did just get morpheus to get some free music...what would be a good way to get rid of this virus?

ive got about 7GB of data that i really really dont want to loose, could i coppy them to a second HDD and format this drive? would i loose the virus completely?

also, not sure if this will help but this seems to be a problem with the directory of all my applications. i tried installing windows again, just over top, but that did not help at all

[Miz]

In this case, "AV" refers to "Anti-virus," not "Audio Visual."

If you don't have an anti-virus program installed or if you have one installed but it's it's a trial version that came on your computer and has expired or not been kept updated, and if you can get online, there are free online virus scans at Panda and Housecall.

The scans can take quite a while to run (in many cases, hours), so be prepared to be patient.

There are a couple of good, free AV programs out there. I use AVG and users of Avast give it good reviews.

If you want to spend money, there's always Norton but the free ones do a decent job without sucking up the resources like Norton does.

[tyrantfour]

i seemed to have fixed the error. i had formated the hdd. took forever to get it to take, i managed to save all my info by attatching a second hdd (already had Wind98SE) and copying files over to it, and then back again. im still strugling a bit with all my drivers re-installed. this sucks but i only got the usb drivers to go...they just wont go in...