This has me baffled... Here's a rundown of what I had been doing and when I noticed the problem:
I had problems with my ISP connections, so I downloaded peoplepc for the 30 day free trial until my regular ISP got the access numbers fixed. (Dialup... sigh... )
Once the program was installed, it killed the acclerator program for my regular ISP and installed its own. The interface was similar to AOL. I checked my usual ISP several times a day and within a week, the access numbers were working again.
I contacted PeoplePC and cancelled that account, and uninstalled the software. Immediately after rebooting, I noticed some of the shortcuts had the icon for IE, some had the icon for Firefox, and I even had icons for Netscape, which I've never used on this machine.
When I connected to the internet and double-clicked an icon for one of my shortcuts, (I do have many shortcuts on the desktop) an IE window opened... then nothing... no data going out or coming in. I right-clicked the icon, copied the addy and pasted it into the window.... hit go, and off it went. UGH! I tried another shortcut icon that had morphed into a Firefox icon with the same result. Same thing with the ones that now show a Netscape icon. :dead:
When I click the IE icon for Internet Explorer to open, it functions normally... taking me to my chosen homepage.
I have tried every shortcut, and none of them take me to the page it should, and all of them open IE... they just dont do anything after that. I tried creating new shortcuts, and they play dead also.
I use AVG anti-virus and Ad-Aware SE, and both of them showed nothing new. I did an online scan with Panda anti-virus and it also reported no issues or virus. The pc is a Gateway, less than a year old, running Windows XP Media Edition.
I'm hoping this is a simple setting that needs to be tweaked and I'm out of ideas. Thank you in advance for any advice.
I had problems with my ISP connections, so I downloaded peoplepc for the 30 day free trial until my regular ISP got the access numbers fixed. (Dialup... sigh... )
Once the program was installed, it killed the acclerator program for my regular ISP and installed its own. The interface was similar to AOL. I checked my usual ISP several times a day and within a week, the access numbers were working again.
I contacted PeoplePC and cancelled that account, and uninstalled the software. Immediately after rebooting, I noticed some of the shortcuts had the icon for IE, some had the icon for Firefox, and I even had icons for Netscape, which I've never used on this machine.
When I connected to the internet and double-clicked an icon for one of my shortcuts, (I do have many shortcuts on the desktop) an IE window opened... then nothing... no data going out or coming in. I right-clicked the icon, copied the addy and pasted it into the window.... hit go, and off it went. UGH! I tried another shortcut icon that had morphed into a Firefox icon with the same result. Same thing with the ones that now show a Netscape icon. :dead:
When I click the IE icon for Internet Explorer to open, it functions normally... taking me to my chosen homepage.
I have tried every shortcut, and none of them take me to the page it should, and all of them open IE... they just dont do anything after that. I tried creating new shortcuts, and they play dead also.
I use AVG anti-virus and Ad-Aware SE, and both of them showed nothing new. I did an online scan with Panda anti-virus and it also reported no issues or virus. The pc is a Gateway, less than a year old, running Windows XP Media Edition.
I'm hoping this is a simple setting that needs to be tweaked and I'm out of ideas. Thank you in advance for any advice.
