Windows There's something about ie...

Ok, well this is a problem I'm having with Internet Explorer. Or at least I think it is. I had let me smaller cousin use my computer. He definately knows very little about computers except how to play games and go on the internet. He's the average computer shopper at a place like Futureshop. Point is that he went on the internet to this web site and accepted some random certificate. This was actually some sort of software in disguise and infected my computer. It was sort of like a hotbar thing, it gave me pictures in the explorer bars. I noticed this the next morning and proceded to uninstall it using add-remove, and then cleansed my computer with Spybot SD, Adaware 6, and Norton AntiVirus 2004 (I'm paranoid). Now however, the problem isn't really fixed. I can't load up internet explorer. When I click the icon in the taskbar (or anywhere else for that matter) it loads into memory as a process but does nothing. Afterwards, I look in my processes and there's several dozen iexplorer.exe processes running. None of which of course show up as a window. For now all I can do is use opera or my laptop for the internet. I'd like to get this fixed soon enough, but I can't seem to be able to uninstall IE and then re-install a new version of it due to windows being mostly dependant on IE (I thought they took Microsoft to court over this?). So now the question is, what do I do? I REALLY don't want to have to re-install WinXP, because backing stuff up would be a pain in the ass. So anyone have any solutions? Also for reference, the software that it installed was in french but had the word "friend" in it, I'm sorry I can't remember the exact wording. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Eeek! Hotbar is evil! It doesn't look good:

http://www.custom-toolbars.com/popular-toolbars/hotbar/how-to-remove-hotbar-from-ie/default.asp

 

reinstall ie (I think you can do this to go to the site of microsoft ( www.microsoft.com) and just download the latest version op ie and intstall it over the older version. use regcleaner to trace remaining parts of hotbar
or use mozilla like me ( www.mozilla.org )

 

Mozilla Firebird all the way!

 

system restore when will you people learn, it's the single good feature of WindowsXP.

 

lol @ [cibyr], you've got that right.

Anyway, if reinstalling IE doesn't work, then just re-install xp 'over-top' of your existing installation. You won't lose any settings/files/programs, but it will ~hopefuly~ restore IE to it's orignal functionality. Otherwise, your smegged!

 

Ok, well it turns out that I just needed to sweep my computer a dozen times with Norton, Spybot SD, and AdAware, and now *poof* it's gone, and my computer works perfectly now. I had tried the reinstalling ie, but it wouldn't let me for some strange reason. Either way, it's fixed now, and that hotbar site really helped. The only problem with system restore, is that you have to have the HD space to make restore points. Either way thanks for your help everyone, my computer is now officially fixed!

Edit: Also, for the record IE sucks, I use Opera personally, but unfortunately, no one in my house seems to know anything but IE.

 

What program did it come with?