-- Posted by youatemypeanut at 4:20 pm on May 7, 2008 So, my brother came to me with a problem he has on his Microsoft Windows XP. His computer has loaded a ton of advertisements onto his desktop, about every 2 seconds it will open up various advertisements onto Windows Internet Explorer. We have deleted all the files downloaded off of limewire. It will not let us change his desktop background and it is REALLY slow. I have a feeling it may be a virus or something? PLEASE do not suggest getting a mac. That does not help us in any way right now. If you can, it'd be nice if you could help. His desktop is almost like an entire page of advertisements, and it will not allow us to change it. Any ideas..? -- Posted by Another Chance at 4:24 pm on May 7, 2008 It's spyware most likely. Could be a virus. System restore? -- Posted by PVHSco08 at 4:25 pm on May 7, 2008 spyware. malware. virus. run a virus or spyware scan. -- Posted by Byble at 3:19 am on May 10, 2008 Well have you got an anti virus program? If you have then scan for viruses using that. You can also use: http://onecare.live.com/site/en-gb/default.htm This is an online virus scanner made by Microsoft, it is free to use. Click Full System Scan and install it and follow the instructions and make sure you click complete scan, this will then scan your whole computer. Please note that the scan can take several hours and will slow down your computer, my suggestion is that you close everything down and just leave your computer while it scans. Ok so about the virus scanner, this virus scanner also scans for spyware and gets rid of those as well. It also cleans your computer registry, does a disc cleanup, disk fragmentation. Once the scan has finished it will say if you want to remove the viruses etc of what it has found tick the boxes, also tick the box if it says can it do a disc fragmentation. Please note i am doing this off the top of my head as i cannot see the ending, but it should be easy to follow. You can also try this free spyware program which scans your computer for spyware and removes it. http://lavasoft.com/single/trialpay.php Click the Ad-aware 2007 FREE edition, download it, and then scan your computer for spyware. Hope this helped. -- Posted by Syber at 12:14 am on May 18, 2008 I know which one your talking about...Really best thing to do is save anything unaffected onto an external and Just reload everything...Format harddrive reaload windows...Then get yourself AVG, Best AV ever =D