Toolbar

THis USED to be the fastest computer in the house.:::sigh:::

Dear daughter of 12 naively downloaded Inbox.com & accompanying programs such as a toolbar, free smilies, and like 3 other things it came with. Well, I uninstalled all of them but in the ADD/REMOVE Programs there was nothing to uninstall this "inbox.com." However, it is now our homepage instead of AOL. (grr)

I was okay with this for now, til I could figure out how to remove it, but then today. Daughter was back on her fav website, said she just hit the Enter key to message her friend when everything went screwy. The IE8 window bars at the top & bottom disappeared (as in a full screen view) then she attempted to use the keyboard to write her friend, and that did not respond properly. So she quietly left the computer for me to discover that whenever I tried clicking on an icon on the Desktop, it would simply go to the Properties of it instead of opening the program. I thought at first, a busted shortcut, but it happened to every one I tried. I logged that User off, and got on the other and while the programs did open in that instance, the keyboard was not responding right. I’d press the G key to type in Google (i had IE8 open at least) but it would just beep/thud (like a dead option), then the other alphabet keys would highlight options on the menu bar when pressed, or if the web address in the address bar was highlighted, it would not delete when I pressed the Delete key!

So I tried System Restore, yet as I could open the window to chose between the tick options, I was unable to get any response by clicking the Start or Cancel buttons or anything in that SysRestore Window!

Tried booting in Safe Mode, w/ F1 and F8, tapping repeatedly while it restarted, yet it won’t go into it and I guess this might be because of the keyboard being messed up.

I am so blaming this on the programs she downloaded and now I can’t seem to roll it back. So in the interest of saving time, I was hoping if anyone knew anything or any of this sounds familiar to you, etc…perhaps you could help me out here at Yahoo instead of me canvassing the entire web researching this and the umpteen hours that could entail.

As I am the only computer geek in the house, any fellow geekers out there are completely welcome to give advice. Except refrain from the tips on letting your kids dL things they shouldn’t, because we’ve already had the "talk" and we’ve all downloaded things we’ve regretted. That’s for sure. Thanks so much!

About the only thing I notice you haven’t tried is anti-malware scans. And I’m sure you have some: That System Restore lockout isn’t accidental.

So D/L some decent stuff, Ad-Aware Free, Spybot S&D, etc., and run it in Safe Mode with Networking.

Good luck. And don’t kill her.