Need Help - Toolbar Problem

[poiu]

For years now I've been plagued by an intermittent problem with Vista. When I wake up my monitor after it has gone into sleep mode, Vista sometimes randomly creates a "toolbar" of one of my desktop folders on the desktop display. It's easy enough to disable (right-click inside the toolbar area, go to 'Toolbars', and the folder name will be listed there with a checkmark next to it -- just uncheck it). But it's a huge pain because the toolbar area shifts my desktop icons around and I have to manually move them back into place. I feel like I shouldn't have to do this, because I didn't create this toolbar in the first place. I can't reproduce it at will, but it has happened to me at least 20 times over the years. I've Googled for this problem and searched on forums lots of times in lots of different ways, but it seems the keywords are all too common and I can't find anyone else discussing this issue. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Is there anything I can do to keep this from happening, or am I doing something to trigger it without realizing it?

 

[roy69]

Next time it happens take a screen grab and post it. Have you deleted a program or removed anything just before this started to happen? One of the reasons this sort of behaviour can be caused is because something is missing that the OS is expecting to find on boot up, but it is not found.

 

[poiu]

Okay, it finally happened again. Here are two screen shots. The first is of the toolbar itself displaying on the desktop (right side). The second is after right-clicking it, to expose the click path required to remove it.

To clarify, this is not something that happens when you boot up from an off state. It happens when the PC is on, you walk away, the monitor goes into sleep mode, and you wake it up.

In looking at the first screen shot, I thought maybe it happened because a folder was selected but not open (single click), but I wasn't able to deliberately reproduce it with a different folder.

 

[roy69]

Try moving the folder from your desktop onto another are on your HD and creat a shortcut to your folder on the desktop.
Have you scanned for viruses.
Have you got anything in your startup folder that may be causing this to happen.

 

[poiu]

I don't know what kind of thing I could have in my Start folder that could be causing this to happen, so I wouldn't know what I was looking for. This seems to be some kind of functionality programmed into Vista, but I can't find a native way to activate it and I can't figure out how it's being activated incidentally. It's a little shocking to me that I can't find any documentation on either.

I do a daily virus scan and it's not just that folder this happens to. It happens on a seemingly random basis to other folders on the desktop.

 

[richc46]

It may be malware (not always the same as a virus) Download and make a scan with the free malwarebytes.

 

[jeffce]

Here are some instructions and the link for Malwarebytes if you need it.

Please download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to your desktop.

• Right-click and Run as Administrator mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
• At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to Update Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, then click Finish.
• If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version.
• Once the program has loaded, select Perform quick scan, then click Scan as shown below.
  
  
  
  
  
• When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
• Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.

 

[Cytherian]

Do you have a folder called "stuff" on your hard drive? If not, then I also suspect that it's malware.

You may want to try booting up into safe mode, allow your computer monitor to sleep and then see if it repeats. I suspect it will not.

If malware can't find anything, then you may have to go through your boot programs (msconfig) and see if you can find any software that doesn't look like it belongs.

 

[poiu]

Cytherian, I don't know exactly what you mean by "on your hard drive." I do have a folder called "stuff" on the desktop. This isn't the only folder it happens to, though. It seems that any folder on the desktop is prone to being randomly presented in this way when I wake up my monitor. I downloaded the recommended malware program and did a sweep. There was some stuff on there that I got rid of. I guess only time will tell if that solved the problem. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

 

[jeffce]

Have you tried running Malwarebytes with the instructions I provided? If so, was there anything found?