Hi, I'm new here and I'm not sure of the etiquette of asking questions or if I'm in the right area.
I have an HP Pavillion laptop and three days ago i found that i could no longer open many of my programs.
When I try to open a program (limewire, microsoft office) or even access folders such as Add/Remove Software, a winzip dialogue box pops up about archiving my files but when I click OK a loud tone sounds and it tells me the file path isn't right.
The only programs I can open are Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook (only if I access it from the start menu, not from the desktop) and Microsoft Word (as long as it's an existing file, I can't access it from the start menu)
Does anyone know why this is happening and how I can stop it???
Bad etiquette would be if you posted your question in someone else's thread (hijacking a thread) or if you posted your question in several forums on this site instead of just one forum in the hopes of getting a faster response (shotgun posting) - so your etiquette is just fine.
The first thing that comes to mind here is malware - especially since you mentioned Limewire - a popular P2P site. Note that downloading files from P2P sites is one of the most common methods computers become infected with malware (viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware, etc.) - badguys love to use P2P sites to propagate their malicious code. Since so much illegal downloading of audio and video content is done through P2P sites, propagation of malware is rampant. As part of practicing safe computing, I recommend avoiding all such P2P sites.
You need to immediately conduct thorough scans of your system with a full arsenal of anti-malware tools. If you don't have a full compliment of security applications, I can post my canned text on that topic.
If this problem started after you installed some new program or hardware, you might try to roll back to a point in time before this problem started using System Restore. See How to use System Restore - MSKB 306084
Just an FYI but WinZip is not necessary if you are running Windows XP, which can unzip files by itself.
You could safely remove Winzip but you may want to wait and see if you can resolve the problem first, before uninstalling anything.
Good luck.
DR
Just an FYI but WinZip is not necessary if you are running Windows XP, which can unzip files by itself.
You could safely remove Winzip but you may want to wait and see if you can resolve the problem first, before uninstalling anything.
Good luck.
DR
Thankyou for your reply, I have tried to uninstall Winzip, but when I try to open up "Add/Remove Programs" I get the same message: Winzip opens a window that says it's "Adding _____ files" then asks me which archive I want to add them to. If I just click on ADD I get an error message that the filename is not complete so i can't just uninstall it.
