unwanted favourites that can't be deleted

[jauneb]

Until a couple of days ago my favourites folder has been fine, but now it is full of casino pages, radio pages, advert links to other useless sites that I cannot get rid off. The rogue sites appear in the internet favourites menu but i cannot get rid off them. My usual favourites I can right click, move them, delete them etc. When I go to the Windows XP Control panel for favourites, they are there and still cannot delete them. I have ran Microsofts Anti-spyware plus blue yonder pc guard to no affail. can you help.  thanks

[c00ky83]

Can't you use the "Organize Favourites" option?

[antz1066]

If you go into My computer, then the C:  drive (or system drive with windows installed on it) then go into the Documents & Settings folder. Then go into your user folder, you will see a file called favourites (usually shaped like a star) if you go into here, you should have no problem deleting them.

[Kerplunk]

If you have run spyware removal and this hasn't worked, try booting in safe mode and then deleting them and run spyware scan again.

[Hermia]

We had this on our work computer. It turned out to be some really horrible spyware which really ****** up the computer. The IT team spent ages trying to rectify the problem. Have a look through the applications and background applications etc folders to see if there are any names you don't recognize. Then search for them on Google and see how other people have dealt with the problem.

[ninja]

I had a very similar thing to this. Every time I opened Explorer all the icons would appear on my desktop which were all links to various dogy websites. Every time I deleted them they would just reappear of their own accord. Ran Mcafee spyware to no avail, then being on AOL, I tried their version of spyware protection, Spyzapper, which located the problem & dealt with the files accordingly. I was suprised that a freebie program would work better than a program I had to pay for.

[bigndaft]

I'm not a boffin on these things but it sounds like something called a LOP. (spy ware or adware I think) I got rid of similar problems with adaware and spybot - both free downloads, as well as a full check with norton. It only ever appeared on one of the kids' log in acounts (XP) from him having clicked on some dodgy links in the past.