On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 13:57:53 -0700,

Mike M's referring to what I call "commercial malware", also commonly
known as spyware.  This dances in the space between malicious
self-spreading "viruses" and "proper" s'ware you'd choose to install.

Like the latter, the author has a financial interest; like the former,
you generally don't want it and didn't intend it to be there.

Because commercial malware is produced by businessess that may
litigate, traditional antivirus software generally turns a blind eye
to them.  Fortunately, some other vendors have the requisite attitude
to write tools that hunt down and kill these things, and such tools
are usually free.  The ones I use are Ad-Aware (www.lavasoft.de) and
Spybot (Google for it), as well as one that's written purely to hunt
and kill a particular pest; CoolWebSearch Shredder.

That's what I wrote, and I'm referring to the fact that you have
shortcuts that can't find thier targets.  That usually means the
target files were removed; either deleted, or cleaned up by an av or
anti-commercial-malware tool as prev discussed.

In that case, all you need do is find and delete the shortcuts.  You
can use a free tool called Shortcutter to do that in Win9x;
unfortunately it won't work in XP.  

Chances are the shortcuts will be in a StartUp group, either in
"C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs", the equivalent Profiles path, or
"C:\Windows\AllUsers\Start Menu\Programs".

 Running Windows-based av to kill active malware is like striking
 a match to see if what you are standing in is water or petrol.