[caseyhoskinson]

Hi!
July 5, I purchased Ad-Aware after running the freeware for several years.
After I opened the AdWatch portion of the program and made it "active", every shortcut on my taskbar and in my start menu has turned into something with a .ink suffix. There may be be other problems. I do know that when I try to open programs thru the start menu, I am asked what to open it with.

Obviously, I can reach the internet because Internet Explorer is on my desktop and not a shortcut.

This has happened to me twice. The first time Lavasoft support said they did not know what else for me to do except reinstall Windows and all my applications. They said that they have heard of this problem but cannot recreate it.

Stupidly, after I reinstalled everything starting with my Windows 98SE, I restarted AdAware w/ Adwatch; after all I had paid for it. I am again "shortcutless" D-oh!
I do not know how to recover from this short of what I did the last time. I hope there is a way. Can I just reload my applications?

Maybe I should (snort) just buy a new computer; after all it is 6 years old.

I hope you can help me because reloading everything is a week long project for me and I am only computer literate enough to be dangerous.
Tell me what you need to know to help me. I will try my best to answer.

Um, thanks,
K.C.
PS: I found you by Googling "Ad-Watch".

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try this:

Open windows Explorer, go to Tools - Folder Options - View and tick the little box that says "Hide file extensions for known file types"

[The_KiD]

try this:

Open windows Explorer, go to Tools - Folder Options - View and tick the little box that says "Hide file extensions for known file types"

[caseyhoskinson]

I'm sorry to report that no effect, box ticked or not ticked. My hard drive whizzed away but there was no change to my problem. (BTW, it was already ticked.)
Any more advice?
KC

[caseyhoskinson]

After a week, Lavasoft Customer Support finally responded to me with with a suggestion other than reinstall your system. I was pointed to a page on the Microsoft support website where I followed the instructions to Manually Restore Windows 98*admin Registry.

http://support.micro...b/221512/EN-US/

It worked! My registry is restored and the "INK"-ups are gone. My start menu is back. My taskbar has come home.
I shall not use Ad-Watch again.