Help! Mother's laptop is on the fritz!

My mother's laptop is causing me issues. I don't know how to deal with it. I am getting numerous error messages. It is running on Windows Vista Home Premium.

When Windows opens I get this message:

"Windows desktop manager has stopped working" Then the computer tries to find a solution, but it never does. Also, all the fonts on the desktop have changed, as well as the background. The desktop clock and calendar have disappeared as well.

On top of this I cannot access many of the programs and I continually get this message:

c:\Windows\system32\control.exe
"Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item,"

Also, Internet Explorer will open, but it has completely changed, and will not navigate anywhere, it continually keeps trying to load this webpage: http://my.yahoo.com over and over again, but never opens it and I cannot make it stop unless I close out IE completely.

I am currently on our home PC trying to figure out what to do to make the laptop work. I have tried system restore, but that does not work so I restored it BACK to the point where it is now. So any suggestions would be helpful... thank you.

 

Sounds like something that could be a result of malware. If you have a USB pin drive or thumb drive download malwarebytes from http://www.malwarebytes.org/ and put it on your mom's computer and run a scan. See what it comes up with.

 

You can try the great folks right here at MG's... the best malware experts around
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=35

P

 

Thank you, I will post in the malware forum.