Hello, new to the site and hope you all can help me.

Here is the rundown. For the past week, my wife has had trouble getting the computer to HOOK to the internet. I say she has the problem since it happens when I'm at work. When I get home, all is fine. I tried to get it to do it over the weekend and it worked fine. Tonight, she had the same problem and she figured that since it was still doning it, she'd just print out some pictures for our albums and when she went to "My Pictures", the "favorites box would show up on the left of the screen, without her doing anything, then disappear. It will keep doing this. What could be the problem?

Thanks for any suggestions.Could you get your wife to write down the steps that she goes through to connect to the internet and the error messages she sees (if any)? That would help a lot.

As for the other problem: the Favourites box will appear/disappear if she presses Ctrl-I. Perhapsshe is leaning on the keyboard at the time? Or clicking something without noticing?Thanks Rob. She doesn't do anything different than I do to get on. It hooks up AUTOMATICALLY at start up. Here is what I found when it finally did it to me today. I unplugged the modem and it seems to connect fine now. (we'll have to see later tonight if it solved the problem) When I was ABLE to get onto the internet the web page would bo screwy. It ould go to "FULL screen" (no header or buttons) to normal screen, then to condensed screen. All the time the Favorites box would pop up. (I was no-where near the keyboard, it was pushed in under the desk and I did check for a stuck button)I use a mico wireless mouse and while this was going on the light on the reciever for the mouse was blinking like crazy. I found a folder in one of my temps folders and it had just about every name of Virus scan, adware/spyware scan in it. (it was a text file) Deleated it, did a scan with the adware and got a few hits, also used Spybot SD and it also had a couple hits. Deleated whatever they found and it didn't act up again. Any suggestions on what else I should look for?

Thanks, I appreciate the help.Uh-oh. What antivirus protection do you use? Is it up to date?I use AVG and update everytime I turn on the computer. (pretty much daily) I also run the scan every other Sun. (full system) I had a virus on my old computer when I was running McAfee and that was how I knew to look in my temps folder for anything unusual. I haven't tried the virus scan after deleating that file I found. (ran out of time before coming to work) All my intuitions were telling me it probably was a virus. Any help?I suggest setting up the scheduler in AVG to run DAILY. Run it when no one is using the computer.

Also might try CCleaner:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

Alan <>< ale52, thanks. I do have CCleaner. Not a bad program. Do have a question for ya about it. When you run the regristry cleaner, do you get rid of everything it finds? I did that once and my recording programs wouldn't work anymore.

My wife just called by the way and everything has been working for her fine. I may have got the problem solved by finding that file. Thanks guys for the help. CCleaner, if that's the registry cleaner you're referring to, is very configurable. Spend a little time with it and you'll see.

To be safe, back up your registry before running CCleaner.

Alan <>< Don't PLAY with a registry cleaner. If you are fond of your current Windows installation...
Use an antivirus (or 2), use an antispyware program (or 2), use a firewall (only 1 ).