Lazy!?

Don't think so. No offense taken.

dodd3256, like nihil said there are several things that you should check befor just scrapping the system.
1. Get the information he has requested. Easiest way to do that is to click on the 'Start' button and then right click on the 'My Computer' on the start list and choose 'properties'
2. run a disk defrag and chkdsk which you can get to by just clicking on the 'My Computer' (in the Start menu) and then right clicking on the hard drive, choosing properties again and then 'Tools'.(I would run both the surface scan and the fix errors parts of the chkdsk function myself......it is called 'Error-Checking' on the XP menue btw)
3. Try to create some short cuts (desktop) by opening up your 'All Programs' list and right clicking on any of them and choosing the 'Send To' option on the popup menue and then 'Desktop (create shortcut).
4. then come back and let us know what happen
OK. I will answer these. Not at her house now. Was going back tomorrow.

1.Here is the start of problem. Upon boot-up windows comes up. Desktop has icons that represent links(we know the story). Except most of the icons are not showing the program icon that it should. (did that make sense). They are generic icons instead, Clicking on them does nothing, will not execute. No problem I say, just do a 'run' from start-up for what ever program I want. Ahhh, instead of running the program the open with dialog window comes up. No problem here I'll just run it from the window. Nope I have to browse to the .exe file and open it that way.Hmmm. Answer this one for me. OK, system info no problem. Well start menu comes up->conrol panel-> system. NOTHING! No execution.But I know this computer is at least 5 yrs old. 10 Gig HD maybe, 256MB memory. If I'm guessing.

2.Didn't think about running the defrag or sandisk, because of #1. But I will try it tomorrow.

3. Will try this. But on further looking into her Windows folders, ALL exe files icons are generic, with no execution. There were no Boot-Up errors for missing .dll files or anything. I ran netstat -a but did not see anything different. I turned off some of her services. (Strange that I could get that), Like the UPnP, Messenger, Telnet, Telephony, which had remote connect stuck on. Could not close out telephony because of this program.??

I don't know what she did, where she went or to what extent her Internet surfing was to get this on her computer. She is not computer knowledgeable at all. And I have tried numerous times to tell her what to do and where not to go. This is really weird for me.

We talked about pullin out the hard drive, but then I thought if we were to do that, I wouldn't have solved it. It would just be as easy to reformat so XTC46, was three steps ahead of ya.

Any thoughts on how to tackle this tomorrow just on this knowledge so far. I also did a safe mode adware/spyware run.