Hi, danielle,
You don't give a lot of specifics, but I suspect the
toolbar that's missing is in Internet Explorer, and was
probably one of the toolbars that is also a malicious
program, so it was removed.
The same is quite possibly true of the icons that are missing.
The dot error is probably a program that is trying to load
at startup that has been removed by Anti-Spyware, but the
load entry was missed.
You have two choices. If you have Windows ME or XP, you can
use System Restore to roll the system back to before you
had Anti-Spyware repair your system, and use a different
cleaning tool (some work better than others for certain
things. A couple of others to try are Ad-Aware
(
http://www.ad-aware.com/) and Spybot Search and Destroy
(
http://spybot.safer-networking.de/en/home/index.html).
Both are free). Or, you can try to repair your system from
it's current state (though that is likely to be messier for
you, unless you have someone with some technical skill to
help you). If you choose the technical route, this will get
you started:
If a filename is mentioned in the error, you may be able to
find the entry by clicking Start, Run, then type (I'm
assuming Windows XP on these examples):
msconfig
and hit enter. Go to the Startup tab and look through the
list for a matching filename and remove it.
The turning off and on and almost for sure a blue screen of
death. Windows XP, by default, with automatically restart
your machine when that happens, so you never see the error
- just your machine unexpectedly restarting. The blue
screen data can be useful in telling you what is wrong
(sometimes it's not, but often it is) - but you have to be
able to see it, to see what part of the system generated
the error. You'll likely need assistance understanding the
blue screen data, but you can at least see it by going to
Start, Run, and typing:
rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL Sysdm.cpl
and hit enter. The Control Panel's System Properties
windows will open. Go to the Advanced tab, then to Startup
and Recovery and click Settings. A new windows will open
called "Startip and Recovery". Under System Failure,
uncheck Automatically Restart, and press OK for all the
windows.
Next time Windows has a serious crash, the system will stop
on the blue screen of death, so you can see what it says.
Most of it will be meaningless to you, but at the top will
likely be something that looks like a filename - write that
down, as well as the error code next to it, and the numbers
to the right of it in the brackets, then look for help
using that information. As long as the error isn't
completely generic (such as most memory failure type errors
are), you'll likely be able to identify what part of
Windows is unhappy.
To restart your machine after writing down the blue screen
data, hold the power button in for 4 or more seconds, and
the machine will shut off so you can restart it.
It's unfortunate your machine has become a mess. That
happens sometimes if your machine had a big enough mess to
deal with, though generally things go smoothly during a
cleanup. With more detail regarding your problem, we can
probably target a series of answers that better suit your
situation. In the meantime, these instructions will get you
heading in the right direction.
I hope that helps.
