HELP!!!!! no control panel, etc.....old newbie here!!

:waveHi...finally got a laptop (used) Last week, got hooked up to HP Comcast Thursday, by Friday my control panel icon had disappeared :cryand I'm blocked from all sorts of places, including Microsoft Security Alerts....I have NO idea what is going on....getting popups from Microsoft Security Alerts(MSA), supposedly saying to click to fix all sorts of different problems....it leads to avsystems...is that MSA?. I've tried to click on the shield icon for MSA in right bottom corner but can not get in, pop up says "operation cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer...contact your system administrator". I'm told by some friends..."Expert computer programmers" (?) That all this is due to a virus and spyware, and that my only choice is to wipe out the harddrive and start over...but I bought this used pute that already had Windows XP on it, so I have no disc even!
ANY suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated!:drool

 

Welcome to MajorGeeks.com, please follow our standard cleaning procedures:

Run ALL the steps in this Sticky thread READ & RUN ME FIRST Before Asking for Support

• Make sure you check version numbers and get all updates.

Very Important: Make sure you tell us the results from running the tutorial...was anything found? Were you unable to complete any of the scans?...Were you unable to download any of the tools?...Did you do the on-line scans as suggested? etc.

After doing ALL of the above and you still have a problem, make sure you have booted to normal mode and run the steps in the below thread to properly use HijackThis and attach the log:

Downloading, Installing, and Running HijackThis

• Make sure you also rename HijackThis.exe as suggested in the procedures. Use analyse.exe for the new name. This is very important due to some new infections going around..

When you return to make your next post, make sure you attach the following logs and that you have run these scans in the following order too:

• CounterSpy Log - only for Windows XP, 2K, & NT users
• AVG Antispyware Log - ONLY IF NEEDED you were not able to run CounterSpy. - only for Windows XP, 2K, & NT users
• Bitdefender Log - from step 6
• Panda Scan Log - from step 6
• runkeys.txt - the log from GetRunKey.bat
• newfiles.txt - the log from ShowNew.bat
• HijackThis Log

NOTE: You can only attach 3 files in a single message so it will require that you use two messages to attach all of these logs!