Recently I attempted to download a program called Emoticons, which enables humorous graphics to be added into email messages. The download was taking a long time so I aborted the process. The installer advised that an icon had been placed on the desktop allowing the installation to be completed at a later time. I selected the icon and pressed ‘delete’ to remove the icon from the desktop. However, now every time I start the computer a message appears stating the system configuration is being checked. The dial-up connection window also appears without any further input from me. When I close the dial-up connection window another message appears informing me to try again later and establish an internet connection. The icon reappears on the screen, and I have to delete the icon again. How can I stop this from happening every time the computer is started? The computer is running Windows XP.

There are quite a few downloadable packages on the internet named Emoticons, so unfortunately I could not identify the exact software you downloaded. That said, many of the software packages allowing you to add such enhancements to emails are often fronts to quite nasty spyware and adware which runs in the background, so you should be extremely wary when downloading and installing such software. In this case, it seems the software is quite persistent about wishing to install, which makes me think it might be a nasty package. So, we need to get this off the computer.

First, we should track down the process causing the Emoticons installer to launch on every startup, which then attempts to resume the download procedure. This will be a process that is loading on startup, so we can use the msconfig utility to disable the process. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type ‘msconfig’ (without the quotes) and click OK. In the System Configuration Utility window that appears, click the ‘Startup’ tab. This will list all the processes which load on Windows startup. Look through the list of processes, paying particular attention to the ‘Startup Item’ and ‘Command’ columns, which respectively specify the name of the process and the location of the process. Look for any reference to Emoticons. Once you have found any process(es) which refer to Emoticons, note the location of the process (in the Command column) and then untick the entry for the process(es). After you have finished, click OK and restart the computer. If no messages appear asking you to install the software it seems we have disabled the correct processes. I also recommend you look in the directory where the process(es) are located (as determined in the Command column) and delete the process executable files, to remove any trace of this from the computer.

Once you have disabled the startup items and removed their executable files I recommend you run a complete virus scan on your computer, and also a spyware and adware scan. If you do not already have a virus scanner, you can download AVG Anti-Virus Free from free.grisoft.com. To scan for spyware and adware, download and run Ad-Aware SE Personal (www.lavasoft.de), Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org), and Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com/downloads). These three programs should be able to detect and remove most adware and spyware which may be residing on the computer.