verbingnouns

Is that to say that your computer is dead, or that there really is a program "the prince of darkness" that has taken it over? I know something about these things if it keeps giving you trouble.

That darn prince of darkness program...he's usually the one that shows up because of the duke of unplug. That royal has absolutely no connections.

Oh, James...and I thought I used bad puns.

My computer has issues that can't be fixed by my usual computer repair method of turning it off and turning it back on. Here's what it does: I go to open a program (any program) and it keeps on opening in anywhere from 5 to 70 windows. I try to stop it...contral+alt+delete, etc, but that doesn't work. Sometimes a right click and a "close all windows" works, but sometimes it doesn't. It's not the mouse, because it does the same thing if I control it with the keyboard. It's done this before several times since I've had the computer (it's barely a year old). I thought it was a virus, but after a few days, it usually goes back to normal. Any suggestions?

For a minute there I thought Kane had stolen your computer. Wrong prince of darkness.

Sounds like spyware. One suggestion is to download a program called Spybot Search & Destroy (S&D), which is free from download.com. Sounds like you may want to download it with a different computer and save it to a disk or CD. I'm assuming that the problem is with Internet Explorer. If it's all the programs than that is trouble. If it's just IE, than running Spybot will take care of 85-99% of the problem.

I would be inclined to echo Mike's post. It does sound like spyware and he's absolutely right about Spybot Search & Destroy. Download it on Micah's or someone elses, burn it to cd, install it on yours, and run it(check for problems, then immunize). That will likely solve your prince of darkness issue. Then you can bannish the duke of unplug and behead the earl of popup.

Thanks for the suggestion, Mike. I'll try it this weekend.

Emily, that cracked me up. Really. A lot.

There is a simple one word, one step solution: Mac!

Mike, you were right. I ran the Spybot Search and Destroy and had 60 bad files. I searched, I destroyed, and it seems to be working fine now.

Dr. Grant, next time I get a computer (which will hopefully be a few years from now) I'll go for the Mac.

That spyware is nasty stuff. Glad it's working now though. If you're used to PCs I wouldn't suggesting going to Macs. Even though Dr G is right about them not having as many issues.