After an invasion of nasty parasites I had a tough time removing all traces of adware, spyware, etc from my PC (OS: Win98SE), but still one stubborn little dropping remains: when I open Start>Run and type just one letter (any letter), some mysterious auto-complete function completes it for me by producing url's I never visited or links I never made, some of which seem OK, but some definitely not. For example: 'a' auto-completes to 'ads.tucows', 'i' to 'icq.ifud.ru', 'd' to 'd.lomulka.ru', 'h' to 'home.tiscali.nl' and 'g' simply to 'g:\', etc. I've already Hijacked-This my register, I've run AdAware, Spybot, Spyhunter, Spyblaster and what not, I've unmarked auto-complete in IE, I've checked my register key HKUsers>...>RunMRU, I've tweaked my system with TweakUI's paranoia... but to no avail. Only getting paranoia myself.

Please your help before I jump.

This is a Run MRU (most recently used) issue.

You can clear it by right clicking the Start Menu button, then selecting Properties. A "Clear" button should be there allowing you to delete this history. It would also be in your best interests to delete the Internet Explorer History. Start > Control Panel >Internet Options > Clear History button.

If this does not solve your issue, please let us know and someone will have an answer.

Good luck,
FunBard

Added note, since I cannot edit my previous post:

Delete your cookies and Internet Temporary Files also. This should purge any data that might be held there.

Start > Control Panel > Internet Options > "Delete Cookies" button and also "Delete Files " button (check the offline files box when prompted)

Thank you for reacting, Fun Bard, but I already unchecked or deleted everything that might be the source of the problem (cookies, IE history, temp files) - but it's still there. Mind you, it's not only url's the auto-completed windows show, but also drives (typing 'g' for example conjures up g.

Unfortunately I can't follow your first advice and delete MRU history in Start Menu>Properties>Clear: there's no Clear button to click on after Start Menu>Properties in my Windows98SE, only a tab called General.

Any idea where the Start>Run history is stored? Commands like 'regedit' and 'sfc' and 'msconfig'? (I don't mean the directory C:\Windows\Applog).

I'd appreciate your advice.

I just noticed you mentioned:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER is the key you actually want to be in. I am not sure if you mistyped or simply looked in the wrong place in the registry.

In either case, double checking can't hurt. Check this registry key, please:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\RunMRU

Check this website for reference: http://www.isye.gatech.edu/people/faculty/Marc_Goetschalckx/cali/Windows%20Configuration/Windows%20Configuration%20Html/RemovingItemsfromtheRunMRUProgramList.htm

As for the Clear button, I was going from memory as I have not had Windows 9x installed for over a year. You may check the other tab in that area for the Clear button. If not, we both learned something.