Canary

Glenn, I've followed your advice and deleted everything that starts with a ~, but it hasn't sorted the probel out, I'm afraid. When I went into "Tools > Options > File Locations > User templates", the file was empty. Should there have been anything in there? (And yes - this is Office XP with Word 2002/03.)

I've just tried that, but there is nothing to enable. I've now uninstalled and reinstalled the Remove Hidden Data tool several times, but the same error message crops up every time I start Word.

Yes - that looks as though it addresses the problem. Thanks for the link. However, I don't quite understand the instructions. It says: "The fix is to reinstall the add-in from the Microsoft site and from the Word Menu use Tools | Templates & Add-Ins | Templates to add that dot file. [rhd.dll should be in the same directory as the dot file.]" But once I launched Word, I went to Tools / Templates & Add-Ins, but I couldn't see how to do the next step. Am I being thick?

Whenever I launch Microsoft Word, I get a message that says "An error occured while trying to launch the Remove Hidden Data tool. Try reinstalling." I've tried uninstalling the tool and reinstalling it, and I've also tried repairing it. Each time, I'm told it has been successful. But when I go into Microsoft Word, the same message comes up. Can I stop this happening?

Hey - I've sorted it. This is probably thoroughly boring to everyone else, but I thought I'd post what I did on the off-chance that anyone else has the same problem. I went to Start / Control Panel / Performance and Maintenance / System. I clicked on the Hardware tab, and then clicked on Device Manager. Somewhere - I think it was under Network Adapters - there was a little red cross next to my wireless icon. I double-clicked on that icon, and under Device Usage I selected "Use this device (enable)". That did the trick and now I can use my wireless device in either of my USB ports.

I have two USB ports that I used to be able to use for my wireless internet access. But for some reason, when I now use the bottom port, the internet won't connect. I've gone into Network Connections, but when the wireless adapter is plugged in it doesn't recognise it's there. The weird thing is, both the USB port and the wireless connector still work OK. The port accepts other connections, and the wireless adapter works in the other port. Any ideas?

I have A-Squared on my computer, so that'll be where it came from, I guess. Thanks for your help.

When I Scanned for Issues with Ccleaner, it found two entries marked "Andreas Haak". Does this mean anything to anyone?

Thanks for all yur feedback. Much appreciated, as ever.

OK - so is there an easy way of finding out what might be doing it?

Thanks, Mike. That was the first thing I tried, and it did actually stop the box from appearing. The only problem was, when the Internet Explorer link was clicked, it wouldn't then connect and you had to reverse the process in order to get the "Dial-up Ooptions" box to reappear. In other words, it seems to be a choice between having the box annoyingly appear at start-up, or not being able to connect at all!

Thanks, but I have already tried that. There was nothing obvious in the list, although I suppose it could have been called something else?

A friend of mine has an old computer with Windows 98 and dial-up broadband. A start-up problem with the computer has now been fixed after I posted elsewhere in these forums (thanks, Tony!). But now whenever the computer is turned on, a "Dial-up Options" box is displayed, asking if you want to connect to the internet. Once you have pressed "Cancel", it appears again and you have to press "Cancel" again. You have to click "Cancel" AT LEAST twice before it does what you want it to. Previously, the box only appeared when you clicked on the Internet Explorer icon. How can it be stopped from appearing every time the computer is turned on? BTW - Just to make things even harder, I'm now 200 miles away from the computer so I don't have access to it. I'm only able to send advice by e-mail.

Andavari, Regarding what you said about not having more than one program working in real-time, I'm using Arovax Shield as real-time and only using the other programs to scan my system every few days. But I still have two questions: 1) I didn't know Windows could give real-time protection. Does just having it installed mean it is giving real-time spyware protection? 2) Just to clarify, are you saying that none of Ewido, Windows Defender, Arovax Shield, Spybot and SpywareBlaster are replacements for Norton Antivirus? Thanks

OK - thanks for putting me right on that! I currently use Norton Antivirus, Spware Blaster, Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware, Ewido and Windows Defender, as well as Arovax Shield. I also sometimes use SUPERAntiSpyware. Iscan my system with Spybot, Ad-Aware, Ewido and Windows Defender AT LEAST weekly. Given what I'm already using, when my Norton Antivirus subscription expires, should I renew it or use something else?

Brilliant - that seems to have done the trick! (Although I already had the latest version installed.) Does that mean I can now get rid of Norton? Does Arovax do everything that Norton does?

I have installed Arovax Shield, and mostly it works fine. But whenever I log on to my computer, I get the message: "Unable to find installed browser : Firefox". I don't have Firefox. Any ideas on how I can avoid this annoying message from coming up all the time? (I've visited the Arovax forums, but for some reason my cookies block me from posting there.)

Thanks again. Much appreciated.

Thanks guys for your help with the SpywareGuard and the SUPERAntiSpyware issues. I've also taken on board your comments on SpywareGuard - although I'm also having problems with Arovax at the moment, so I'll keep SG until I've sorted them out. Just one last question here, though, Tony - where can I find TeaTimer? Is it part of the basic Spybot package, or do I have to get it from somewhere else?

This is driving me absolutely mad. Not much gets me angry, but I'm tearing my hair our here . . . I've just returned to the Arovax forums. I went to the list of forum threads, but to search the threads I had to log in. So far, so good. But once I logged in, I couldn't do anything. I can't search the forums or even get access to view any forums. And if I click on the links Andavari supplied, I get messages such as "Sorry, but you do not have permission to use this feature. If you are not logged in, you may do so using the form below if available", or "Sorry, the link that brought you to this page seems to be out of date or broken". I can't log OUT of the forums, and I can't find the "Delete cookies set by this board" link. Otherwise, it's going swimmingly . . .

I've got Spybot S&D - but I'm not sure what the Teatimer component is . . .

As for the Registry bit I'd like to see an export of the registry key in question. Log on to the account where SpywareGuard does start up automatically. Now go to Start > Run, and paste the following into the box, then click OK: regedit /e C:\run.txt HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run That will export the contents of that key to a C:\Run.txt file Paste the contents of the run.txt file into your reply, and I'll tell you how to proceed. Here's that run.txt file: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] "CTFMON.EXE"="C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\ctfmon.exe" "SUPERAntiSpyware"="C:\\Program Files\\SUPERAntiSpyware\\SUPERAntiSpyware.exe"

Thanks Tony. I understand the basics of what you're saying - but could you give me some guidance on how to implement it? I'm still a bit of a novice.

I have recently downloaded bpywareGuard and SUPERAntiSpyware, and both seem to be running OK. When I log on, SpywareGuard runs at start-up and I have to manually run SUPERAntiSpyware. But on the other administrator account on this PC, it is the other way round, and SUPERAntiSpyware runs at start-up and SpywareGuard has to be run automatically. I don't understand this, as both programs were downloaded when I was logged on as the administrator. I have been into run/mscong/startup, but there are no additional boxes to check on either account. How can I get both programs to run at start-up on both administrator accounts?

Hang on - problem solved! I looked at previous posts about the same thing. Sorry - I should have done that first!