Items missing from Windows 7 Start Menu

By flynempire
in Microsoft (Windows)

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Experienced

flynempire

Posted
Posted

Hello a customer of mine is having a strange problem. The other night something occurred on her PC where everything disappeared. I started looking around in the system and finally noticed that everything was set to hidden. I had seen something similar like this in the past from a virus but in her case no virus warning has come up, etc.

When I say everything I mean Icons, program short cuts, wallpaper, Start Menu items, etc.

I removed the hidden setting on everything I could and was able to get back the machine to a normal state but up to a point. I thought about a system restore but only yesterdays date appears. The rest were erased somehow.

The biggest problem now is that the text items on the right of the Start Menu like Control Panel, Computer, User Name, etc are all gone. I have never seen this before. Is there a way to restore this? It really looks abnormal.

I am changing her antivirus today (MSE) to a full security suite NIS 2012 in case it was malware. Since 2010 I have had experience with Windows 7 and it has been wonderful. It is very rare for me to see things like this happen. It would not surprise me on XP

Victor

Grand Master

Steven P. Administrators

Posted
  • Administrators
Posted

http://www.<< spam >>/general-discussion/19329-all-programs-list-start-menu-disappearing.html

This is not spam, why is it saying its spam? It's win 7 bords

What site are you linking? Some were banned for spamming a long time ago :p

Grand Master

BeerFan

Posted
Posted

That's a malware infection... we've seen that pop up at work a lot recently. They can be difficult to get rid of, but try these:

http://www.geekstogo...den-files-help/

http://wyzguys.blogs...les-hidden.html

http://www.<< spam >>/system-security/219919-all-files-hidden-after-malware-popup.html

Edit: that last one was from the Windows 7 Forums, but the spam filter caught it.

Experienced

flynempire

Posted
  • Author
Posted

This did not help me. The program folders do show but when you click to open most show empty. The big problem is the standard items on the right are totally gone and that I have never seen before.

See attached screen capture and you will see what I am talking about. This is what I am trying to get back. I should mention I purchased for her a Norton Internet Security 2012 with 2 years updates and have installed it and and running a scan. Prior to this I had MSE on here and I checked the quarantine before I removed it and saw that from 5-1-2012 thru 5-5-2012 it removed several malware.

This is probably what caused this problem. They are gone now.

post-325180-0-63137200-1336742475_thumb.

Community Regular

Billaguana

Posted
Posted

Reset start menu to default from right clicking the taskbar and going to properties. Also scan with Mbam and unhide the users directory to restore back to normal. Also make sure all the start menu links for the applications are there. If they aren't, they are in appdata/local

Experienced

flynempire

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Well DUHH! On me!!

Sorry I forgot to check in there. Everything is back to normal. This malware really did a number.

  • 2 weeks later...
Experienced

flynempire

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I fixed the problem and sorry for late reply. Everything was hidden due to a virus that came in. I unhid everything and then found a link to a program from someone called unhide,exe and that removed the hidden from many other aspects of the system and now all is well for the customer.

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