Hey guys, I just bought an older used computer and it has program icons on the main screen that I want to remove. It is with all the other little icons on the main blue screen. It is a compaq presario with windows 98. I went into the add remove programs in the menu but the icon is not shown. One of the icons is ebay, the other is a porn site. both are just links and not installed programs. I'm gonna give this unit to my kids, so I dont want any crap on it to start out with.
Any help would be great
Thanks
SPECTRE

These appear to be links (URLs) to sites on the internet, not actual program shortcuts.  Just single-click on the links to highlight them then press the 'Delete' key to get rid of them (be sure to empty the 'Recycle Bin' to prevent them from being recovered by your kids.)

Hope this helps.

let's start with the this:

right click the icon, a little menu should pop up, look towards the bottom of the menu, you should see "Delete", left click it, it should ask if you want to send to the recycle box, click yes.

hope this helps

[beer]

If the icon is on the main desktop screen, right click on the icon and select delete.  That should take care of it for ya.

If the computer has seen been used to surf for things you don't want to kids to see, do the following to erase the trail leading back to the web sites and or pics.

Go into Start/Settings/Taskbar/Advanced and select "Clear".  Go into Internet Explorer and go to Tools/Internet Options delete temp internet files and clear history.  Hope this helps..

THANKS TO ALL !!!! it worked great, once again the vast pool of knowledge came through !!!
SPECTRE

You might want to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Win98 on it.  Otherwise, there's no telling what your kids might see. [moon] [sex] [rolleyes]

You can find the serial number for Win95 (and I assume Win98) by opeining the System panel of the Control Panel (Start->Settings->Control Panel->System).  Get that found and written down first, before you wipe the machine. . . .  It should be five groups of five alphanumeric characters (for Win98) (25 chars in all).