I fight a running battle with spyware and adware on a friend's computer. The really nasty stuff takes specialized tools, but I've learned a few general tricks along the way.
You may know this already, but it's sometimes a good idea to turn off the System Restore feature in Windows before getting rid of stuff you don't want to come back. (Control Panel/System/System Restore).
msconfig (invoke it from the Run box on the Start Menu) is very useful. The "startup" tab will show you what runs at startup and where it is told to run; often that's in the registry. (Proceed with caution, of course, but I have managed to delete annoyances that way using regedit.) You can also use msconfig to ask for a 'diagnostic startup', which is a lot like starting in safe mode, but easier, and may let you get rid of some things that refuse to be deleted while they're running.
Some Startup things will be in the Startup folder in your own start menu, where you can use the Advanced button on Control Panel/Taskbar and Start Menu/Customize) to clear them, but some may be in the All Users start menu, ('Common Startup') in msconfig, which you can get to from c:\documents and settings\all users\start menu.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
You may know this already, but it's sometimes a good idea to turn off the System Restore feature in Windows before getting rid of stuff you don't want to come back. (Control Panel/System/System Restore).
msconfig (invoke it from the Run box on the Start Menu) is very useful. The "startup" tab will show you what runs at startup and where it is told to run; often that's in the registry. (Proceed with caution, of course, but I have managed to delete annoyances that way using regedit.) You can also use msconfig to ask for a 'diagnostic startup', which is a lot like starting in safe mode, but easier, and may let you get rid of some things that refuse to be deleted while they're running.
Some Startup things will be in the Startup folder in your own start menu, where you can use the Advanced button on Control Panel/Taskbar and Start Menu/Customize) to clear them, but some may be in the All Users start menu, ('Common Startup') in msconfig, which you can get to from c:\documents and settings\all users\start menu.