Computer Virus?
 

I'm trying to fix my friend's computer for her, and I'm not sure where to start.

So far her virus scanner hasn't found anything, nor has Adaware.

The main problems are that her Games (solitaire, hearts, etc.), the calculator, paint, and a number of other accessories have disappeared. Windows Media Player also isn't working. Whenever she goes to Windows Components in Add/Remove Programs to try to reinstall her accessories it asks for the program spider.exe.

What should we do to try to fix this?

The first thing I'll be doing when I can is use my own Windows Cd to try to fix the accessories problem, but from there I'm a little lost.

This is a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop running Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2.

Try a google search for the aformentioned "spider.exe". It appears several trojans use it.

Spider.exe is also the name of the Spider Solitaire game for Windows, isn't it? Been a while...

yes it is, but its just a name.

if its really bad, mount the drive in another computer, scan for viruses, copy the important files to the second system, return the hard drive, format and start from scratch (then copy the files back)

Go to www.housecall.antivirus.com and scan for free. I had a very nast virus on my computer at one point that Norton never did find. I went to that website and found the damn thing. Unfortunately, for me... it was way to late. I had to dump out my whole system and reinstall it.

viruses are just the internets way of telling you its time to do your 6 month basic windows maitnance and format and reinstall windows.

Try looking for F-Secures BLACKLIGHT...there is a free down load.
it will find Trojans in your hidden system files...

I had Three and they drove me nuts..until blacklight got rid of them.

Alright, I think I have to do a reformat of her computer.

She's running Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2.

How should I go about doing this? I'd rather not mess anything up on her computer. When I reinstall Windows will I have to completely reinstall every program we had on the computer before reinstalling it? I don't do this very often, and only at times when my computer's died on me far enough that it's had to be re-Window'd.

Never ever ever ever ever ever install Windows over top of an existing installation; I don't know if that's what you meant by re-installing programs or not. Never do -- it'll make the situation worse.

If you plan to re-install windows, get everything important backed up off the drive, format the drive, and insert the windows CD. The rest is straight forward if you've done it before.