Ok guys, here's a stupid thing that I did and an annooying thing that I need help to fix.  You guys ever had that program that annoyingly attaches to your comp no matter how much you really don't want it?  It's called Gator.  And it's a royal pain in my backside!!!

Everytime a user logs onto my local machine, A warning note comes up saying:

The Drive or Network connection that the shortcut 'GStartup.Ink' refers to is unavailable.
Make sure that the disk is properly inserted or the network resource  is available,
and then try again.

THIS is what I've done.
1) There were annoying apps called CMESys and GMT (dealing with Gator) showing up
in Task Mgr on login

2) Said apps/programs were NOT present in Add/Remove Programs

3) So I erased their sources from C:/ProgramFiles/Common Files/Gator

4) AND deleted sections in the Registry using REGEDIT

5) Furthermore. ..i did a search on Regedit for GStartup.Ink and deleted that also

SO . . .

1) HOW should I go about changes to get rid of this annoying message

2) I'm thinking that this is a startup program somewhere in the OS and I need to
figure out a way of extracting said "shortcut" arrrgh.

KAIM= yes yes. I KNOW I'm not supposed to mess with Registry.  But this program has again and agian creeped into my system.  And it pisses me off.  I DO have ad-aware and use it frequently.  And I know I compunded this problem with my over tuned zeal.  Help!

Start/run sysedit, look for references for it in one of the files, type rem in front of the lines where it's mentioned.

I would suggest doing a search for AdAware. Small program that removes spy/ad software from all over the place. I believe Lavasoft makes it, give it a try.

DOH.  Halfway into pressing SUBMIT I suddently had a flash of inspiration.  There's obviously a shortcut in the programming somewhere LOOKING for something to run.  SO I GAVE IT SOMETHING TO RUN.

I installed Gator, that !@$#^%%* again, and solved the problem.  Uninstalled the 2 located in Add/Remove and am back to where I started.  But GMT and CMESYs are once again showing on apps upon logon.  Am using ad-aware to clean up some messes.  But still thinking of finding ways of getting those awful things. ..cleanly.

Ditch Gator and go with some other software app. Limewire or Kazaa lite work fine.

Av.

Here's what I would do to complete the purge:

1) Search c:\ for 'GStartup.Ink', including system & hidden folders.  The error messages means that the shortcut still exists, but the target is missing.  Delete any that you find.

2) Go through c:\windows\system.ini and c:\windows\win.ini to look for calls to this shortcut, then delete them.  [This step can be acomplished on some windows versions with 'sysedit', as Kar98 says above.]

Good luck!

Look at this thread.
[url]http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?id=115132[/url]
Run adware and see if that helps clean it up.  The offending shortcut could be in your registry.  

Here's an update.  Simply running As-aware will get rid of all Gator crap files.  And there's a whole bunch of them.  SUMBITCHES.

BUT . . . this will then give you the same problem with the message saying about GStartup.ink.  

Will try your suggestions.  Thanks all and keep it coming.

Found the problem.  The file extension is actually not "INK"  but  "LNK".  It's hard to determine due to lowercase.  I was looking for the wrong item using search for *.INK.  Anyway, that very annoying announcement is gone.  There remains the cleanup of the registry for residual crap.

Not to mention that an .EXE file called USERINIT.exe located in C:/winnt (somewhere in there) seems to be connected to Scumware ALA Gator.  The only concern of mine is that it eats up RAM.  

SO for posterity and any other people taken by Scumware Gator.  The location of GStartup.LNK is at:

C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Start Menu/Programs/Startup

(This is specifically for the case on WIN 2k Pro by the way)