Please Help

[Dieselfixer]

I am having a problem and have no idea how to fix it. The first problem is whenever I start up my computer internet explorer opens to my homepage. this has just recently started happening. My second problem is that I had some songs and some video pics of my grandson and had a icon on my desktop to get to them. The icons are gone from my desktop and when I run start/search it does not find where that stuff is. How can I find the missing Icons or folders and what may have caused them to go away? I have a Sony Viao desktop running Windows XP Home.
Any help will be appreicated.

Thanks: AL

[mireland]

I am having a problem and have no idea how to fix it. The first problem is whenever I start up my computer internet explorer opens to my homepage. this has just recently started happening. My second problem is that I had some songs and some video pics of my grandson and had a icon on my desktop to get to them. The icons are gone from my desktop and when I run start/search it does not find where that stuff is. How can I find the missing Icons or folders and what may have caused them to go away? I have a Sony Viao desktop running Windows XP Home.
Any help will be appreicated.

Thanks: AL

have you checked for virus or cleaned up spyware/adware??

[Midknyte]

sounds like you need to do some house cleaning.
Antivirus/Antispy

[Dieselfixer]

Yes I have ran Norton Anti Virus, Spybot , Adaware & Microsoft Antispyware and deleted anything that any of them found. No virus was found but there was a few spyware items. After deleting the spyware I restarted the computer and it is still doing the same thing with explorer opening to my homepage and I still can't find the missing files.

[Rocketmech]

Try scanning again in Safe Mode several times .

[Dieselfixer]

I tried SpySweeper and it found the explorer problem. I still can't find the folders & desktop icons that are missing.

[F15_NDI]

Al,
I know sometimes with Windows XP, it can hide Icons that are not used that often. I never had that happen so I do not know where they go or if there is a quick short cut to get them back. I'm sure there is but Somebody else will have to enlighten us. Did you check the recycle bin to make sure nothing was accidentally deleted? Also, did you search for file extensions ? Like for your pictures,...if they are JPEG pics,..you can search for just .jpeg and that should show you all of those type of pictures on the drive you are searching. If your songs are .wma or .mp3 files...you can search the same way. Also, check under "My Documents" to see if they are in there. I'm sure you already checked under "My music" and "My Pictures" for the missing files. They should be out there somewhere....look everywhere. There are other file extensions that you can search for but we need these Computerholics like our friend midknyte from the asylum to help list those. I'm just learning myself. Hope you can find those soon. Good luck.

dale

[Eric Legge]

Right click an empty area of the bottom taskbar, and click Properties.

There is a box in the window that comes up that says "Hide inactive icons" beside it. If the box is enabled, disable it.

You change the Home page in Control Panel => Internet Options => General tab.

Have you tried to change it?