k, first off I'm sorry for only popping up when I have tech troubles, but this is the only place I've found so far that people have good advice for this stuff.

Problem is this. Roommates.

See, one of my roommates installed something while online without knowing it and now when I start up Internet Explorer there's an annoying blue bar underneath the 'address' bar. It's obviously spyware, because depending on what website I'm on, the buttons it displays customize to correspond with interests related to that site. (example: on Hotmail, the buttons list MSN CHAT, MSN SEARCH, MSN blah blah... on Amazon it lists AMAZON BOOKS, FREE DVD and others) Initially, when I signed onto Windows, this bar was it's own window floating on my desktop. I closed it but it still pops up in Explorer. When I right click on my Explorer taskbar, I can turn it on and off by highlighting "cptrckjtnpr."

It's mildly annoying, but I hate spyware. I hate the fact that I can't find it to uninstall it, and that AdAware didn't catch it. I took screen shots but I don't know how to post them here, so I'll try to post the links and see if they work. If anyone can help I'd appreciate it greatly. Thanks

http://www.geocities.com/pr0ject605/...opupthing1.art
http://www.geocities.com/pr0ject605/...opupthing2.art

Standard advice for spyware: download, install and run both Ad-aware and Spybot Search & Destroy and together they should be able to eliminate any spy and adware. Just pop the names into a google search to find download locations.

...and if you and your roommates all use separate profiles in XP, run both under each profile. ;)

P