Whenever my computer starts Internet Explorer opens and a blank page appears. I need to minimise this page to see my desktop. If I close the page it re-opens again a few minutes later. How can I stop this random internet page from appearing? The computer is running Windows Vista.

From the description of the program it seems that something on your computer is attempting to open a web page when the computer starts and then persistently attempts to keep opening that web page should it be closed. However, since only a blank page appears it is likely that the program cannot reach the desired web page (perhaps because you are not connected to the internet when the computer boots and it attempts to load). In any case, this is a problem which definitely needs to be resolved.

My initial thought on this problem is that your computer may be infected with either adware or spyware (collectively known as malware). Such malware generally installs itself on the computer and then displays unsolicited advertisements. Additionally, some of the more nasty malware also communicates personal information back to a third-party, potentially compromising your privacy. As such, it is very important that you check whether the problem is being caused by malware and remedy that as appropriate. You should be able to scan your computer for spyware and adware using three free utilities. The first utility is Windows Defender, which is installed with Windows Vista by default. Go to the “Start” menu and type “Windows Defender” in the search field. Once found, start Windows Defender and scan your computer using the utility. If any threats are detected, make sure you take the recommended action to clean these from your computer. Once this scan has completed I suggest that you also download and scan the computer using Ad-Aware Free (www.lavasoft.de) and Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org). This is because occasionally one scanner may miss a threat which another scanner can detect. Furthermore, as these other two utilities are free there is no real disadvantage in using all the utilities at your disposal.

However, if you find that the problem is not related to a piece of malware, as the scanners did not detect anything which could be causing this problem, the next possibility is that a legitimate piece of software is attempting to open a web page on startup. As such, we will need to determine which software package is causing this problem. To start the troubleshooting process we will disable all processes and programs from loading on Windows startup. Go to the “Start” menu and type “msconfig” (without the quotes) then click OK. In the System Configuration window click the “Startup” tab. This will list all applications which load on startup. Write down the name of each program or process which is ticked (i.e. enabled) to load on startup. This is important to ensure that at the end of the process you can re-enable these processes again. Once all the enabled processes have been written down, click the “Disable all” button to disable all the processes from loading on startup and then click OK. Restart the computer.

When the computer restarts you will probably notice that no programs load on startup and the blank web page should also not appear. This is a good sign, as it means that one of the programs or processes which were previously disabled was causing the problem. In this situation, it will be a process of elimination to determine which process or program was causing the problem. Go back into the System Configuration window and re-enable one of the processes which you disabled. Click OK and then restart the computer. Check whether the blank web page appears. Repeat this procedure until the blank web page appears upon startup. At that point you will know the most recently enabled program or process has caused the problem. You will then need to decide whether you can leave that program or process disabled or whether there is a way to fix the problem. I suggest that once you have the name of the problematic process you search the internet to see whether anyone else has experienced a similar issue and have a resolution.

After you have determined the program or process causing the problem make sure that you remember to re-enable all the other programs and processes.