When I minimize a folder it does not appear on the task bar.  When I
push alt tab it does appear but does not always open. This has  been
happening on my lap top for a week or so. It now is happening on my
desk computer. In fact when I open a folder sometime it simply
minimizes itself and therefore disappears. I know that it is open
since when I try to open a series of spreadsheets after six failed
attempts it says that I can only open 6 spreadsheets. Therefore they
are open but I cant retrieve them. The two computers are not connected
in any way but I have copied via disk a number of spreadsheets. Do I
have a virus? If so how do I get rid of it? If not what can I do?

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Clarification of Question by geolund-ga on 08 Dec 2002 19:49 PST

I used housecall..It identified 7 contaminated files. They were listed
with worm--friendcrt.b.
I dont know if they have anything to do with my problem but I surmize
they do. Now that I have found this contamination how do I get rid of
it?

geolund...

Your Request for Clarification is dated before your
comment, in which you note that the problem with the
taskbar is eliminated. You asked how to get rid of the 
virus which was found. At the beginning of the process
of using 'housecall', there should be a checkbox which
says 'autoclean', or something to that effect. If this
is checked, it should clean the virus from your 
computerautomatically, upon detection. If that's not
the case, the viruses found should be listed in a box
at the end of the process, and you should be offered
the option of selecting and cleaning each one from your
system. If you're not sure if your system was 'auto-
cleaned', of if you selected the virus and asked that
it be removed, but 'housecall' was unable to do so,
it should have given you the message 'unable to remove'.

If you're uncertain whether the virus was removed, you
can simply run housecall again, and see if it is found
to be still present. If it is still present, you can
download Trend Micro's 30-day trial version of their
antivirus program, which will 'quarantine' the virus,
if it cannot 'fix' it, by moving it to a secure folder.
You can then delete it by using the options in the
program.

PC-cillin 2003 is the name of their downloadable program,
and you can obtain the 30-day trial version here:
http://www.trendmicro.com/en/products/desktop/pc-cillin/evaluate/trial.htm

I'm glad this solved your problem.

sublime1-ga

geolund...

Please point your browser to the best online
anti-virus scanner available, at Trend Micro:

http://housecall.antivirus.com/

If this resolves your problem, let me know, 
and I'll post this as the answer.

sublime1-ga

I followwed the procedure given to clean infected files and the
problem with the task bar was eliminated. Thank you  forw the help.