A friend of mine is having some problems with his computer. (taskbar and etc)

[Rayz]

A friend of mine is talking to me via instant messager, and he's having issues that is keep him from doing anything (web browsing, and opening programs). Luckily, his isntant messager program is opened on startup, so we can communicate. I don't know exactly whats wrong, but here's what he is saying.

Quote:

well, on start up, there is no bar

there is no task bar at all

explorer.exe is not normally working anymore for some reason
so when i run it, the task bar flashes

it appears for a short amount of time. soon after, it disappears just like before

sometimes explorer.exe closes and this doesnt happen anymore, sometimes it just continues to appear and disappear in a few second intervals

When he referes to explorer.exe he obviously means the process that shows when you do Task Manager.

He also mentioned when the problems started.

Quote:

a while ago i got a spy sweeper thing pop up

it said "block installation of some program that started with an R and was like RSD153 or whatever

it looked suspicious so i blocked it, whatever

then my toolbar at the bottom of the screen completely disappeared

it started flashing but now it wont even pop up

[Atomic Rooster]

Have him boot into safe mode and run a spyware cleaner such as AdAware or Spybot.