I have been having the same spyware problem that others have been having with a few twists.  For me, my background changed to a warning indicaring that a virus infected my computer, a bubble kept popping up in lower right hand corner stating that my computer is at risk, and pop-ups that appeared similar to Windows applications popped up on the screen.  Finally, a desktop icon that I did not recognize appeared in the lower left portion of my desktop that appeared to be an imprint of a dog's track and was labeled "WinHound."  I attempted to follow the computer prompts to protect my computer.  After some downloading, however, I was prompted to re-start the computer.  Upon doing so, the old wallpaper had returned, but an error message popped onto my screen entitled, "Explorer.exe-unable to locate component."  The text of the message says "this application has failed to start because WININEP.dll was not found.  Re-installing the application may fix this problem."  I then attempted to re-install Internet software from the factory disks, but was unable to do so. 

 

Now, I can't fix the syware because there are no desktop icons or an icon for the Start menu.  Can anyone help?????