No drives shown when you click Computer icon

[boomerang]

The only thing visible is My Shared Folders. The Computer shortcut in Start menu shows the same.

Friend of a friend thing. He's elderly and does not know when it happened or what caused it. I've never seen anything like this before. My Googling is not coming up with anything specific. My Googling skills are sometimes lacking though.

I'm running Vista myself, and I can't seem to duplicate it.

Has anyone seen this or know of a fix?

 

[Raduque]

This might help
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto...uter-in-windows-vista/
Might try seeing if this key exists and dump it then restart.

 

[boomerang]

Originally posted by: Raduque
This might help
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto...uter-in-windows-vista/
Might try seeing if this key exists and dump it then restart.

Yeah, I ran across that. Nest time I have it in front of me, I'll check that out. The other thing that kept popping up is this occurring after an installation of Messenger. However the key that needs to be deleted to correct the problem does not exist on his computer.

I was also thinking of deleting the icon using Change desktop icons in Personalization. Then enabling it again. This kind of thing used to sometimes fix weird problems in XP. Might need a reboot in between, might not.

Otherwise, I think it's time to look at a malware problem. Although it seems curious that I cannot find any references to this exact problem relating to malware.

It's a weird one, that's for sure.

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: boomerang
The other thing that kept popping up is this occurring after an installation of Messenger.

Oooo, I had some weird issues last year from a Messenger installation too. My drives didn't make like a tree and leaf, but my System Restore was broken, and a few other things. I had to reinstall Vista.

 

[boomerang]

It was malware. He had Antivirus 2009 or whatever name they are using now. mbam took care of it.

This is the 5th or 6th computer I've dealt with that had some variant of this. Antivirus 2008, antivirus 2009, antivirus XP 2009, there are a bunch of names. Nobody seems to know how they got it.

Does anyone know the manner of infection for this thing?

 

[Paperlantern]

Last I knew Antivirus XP 2008 was distributed through a codec pack and even some software patches, as well as ads that can be clicked on on websites that state you are infected, even though you really arent, until you click the ad. Not terribly nasty to remove, but annoying enough. Malwarebytes' Anti Malware was able to remove it from my parent's machine a few months ago.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: boomerang
It was malware. He had Antivirus 2009 or whatever name they are using now. mbam took care of it.

This is the 5th or 6th computer I've dealt with that had some variant of this. Antivirus 2008, antivirus 2009, antivirus XP 2009, there are a bunch of names. Nobody seems to know how they got it.

Does anyone know the manner of infection for this thing?

My friend got it, and I think that it came in over the network. He was running his computer for several weeks without the router as protection.

 

[rgallant]

Originally posted by: boomerang
The only thing visible is My Shared Folders. The Computer shortcut in Start menu shows the same.
please delete did not see the solved part.