I think I may have a virus and when I downloaded Adaware the computer needs to be restarted in order to load properly. But for some reason when I go to shut down or restart the computer the icons on the desktop will be gone but the background picture remains and it will not shut down completely. I am running Windows XP sp2 on a Dell D420 laptop. Does any one have a solution for this? Thank you in advance for any help that you may be able to provide!

I am not too sure if it will in fact work to finish uploading the program but have you tried to just hold the power button down until it turns off? It usually take about 10 seconds of pressing the button to turn off. Then wait a minute and turn it back on and see if the program went through...

I have done that. When I ran the program it found the spyware and viruses and deleted them. Adaware is now in the German language. The only way I can close the computer is by holding the power button. But it does not actually let the computer reboot normally. I have tried to do it in safe mode and it will reboot the right way but it will not take care of this problem for some reason. The main problem is the fact that while browsing the internet it will tell me I do not have enough memory and it forces me to close Firefox. Thank you for your help and if you have any more advice or maybe any questions for me to help you pinpoint the problem just let me know! :)

Shut down PC and restart in safe mode - Uninstall program through add remove programs, once uninstalled, make sure folder is also removed and restart, post back with any thing that still does not look right

First thing is to get uninstalled if possible and go from there

I thank you for the response, but that was not the program that caused this mishap. I installed adaware to find out what was causing the problem. I will try that along with any other programs that could have been installed previous to that and see if it works. But I believe it is a virus that for some reason can not be deleted. Thank you so much for your response and if there is any other information you can provide I would be grateful!

Do you have an antivirus installed?

Click on start, run, type msconfig and hit enter - Go to the startup tab and look for anything that does not look like it should not be there and uncheck it and click apply.

If not sure, you can search for the name of the program through Google to see what is related to or you can post back here what you have listed in the startup tab