debug file on my desktop? i may have a virus...please help

i may or may not have a virus on my laptop. i have dell studio 1750 i bought about a year ago, with mcafee antivirus. however, i just looked at my flags and one of them was my mcafee was turned off. wth? i never ever turn it off so i don't know how that happened, or how long it was off.

a while back, maybe a week or two ago, i noted a text looking file on my desktop called "debug". when i clicked on it, it would not open. so i deleted it when i saw it, as long as IE was closed it would delete.

tonight i think i made a big mistake. the icon was there again and this time i "open with" notepad. since that time, it opened up like four or five windows with wierd writing in the notepad. my dell dock disappeared from the top of my desktop. it recreated icons for about 50% of my desktop all looking like one note icons. at least i think they are, since the window says "one note 2007" with the wierd writing on it. plus, when i hit the start button, ALL the icons there are changed to the notepad/onenote icon.

as you can tell i'm no expert, but i have the feeling i may have just put a virus on my computer, although i m not sure. i just ran a macfee scan and found nothing, i ran another scanner and found nothing, and i'm in the process of scanning with the microsoft virus scan and removal tool, and so far nothing.

if anyone can offer some advice to me i would appreciate it.

thanks for stopping by.

thanks. let's see what happens.

mattjay said:

i may or may not have a virus on my laptop. i have dell studio 1750 i bought about a year ago, with mcafee antivirus. however, i just looked at my flags and one of them was my mcafee was turned off. wth? i never ever turn it off so i don't know how that happened, or how long it was off.

a while back, maybe a week or two ago, i noted a text looking file on my desktop called "debug". when i clicked on it, it would not open. so i deleted it when i saw it, as long as IE was closed it would delete.

tonight i think i made a big mistake. the icon was there again and this time i "open with" notepad. since that time, it opened up like four or five windows with wierd writing in the notepad. my dell dock disappeared from the top of my desktop. it recreated icons for about 50% of my desktop all looking like one note icons. at least i think they are, since the window says "one note 2007" with the wierd writing on it. plus, when i hit the start button, ALL the icons there are changed to the notepad/onenote icon.

as you can tell i'm no expert, but i have the feeling i may have just put a virus on my computer, although i m not sure. i just ran a macfee scan and found nothing, i ran another scanner and found nothing, and i'm in the process of scanning with the microsoft virus scan and removal tool, and so far nothing.

if anyone can offer some advice to me i would appreciate it.

thanks for stopping by.

Have you run you anti virus?

That's weird. Someone may of already gotten access to your computer since your anti-virus was off. You should look into this ASAP. Make sure you switch your anti-virus back on though! You should've of opened that folder, I would suggest you run a full system scan to remove any threats!

hello guys, thanks for the input.
here's the updates:
i ran malwarebytes, microsoft malware removal and detection, and trend micro scanner. as well as a full mcafee scan on my computer. nothing was detected.
on my desktop, the computer replaced all my program file shortcuts with the notepad looking icon. when i try to open a program, either on the desktop shortcut or my start menu, i get the "one note" window with a bunch of obscure wrtiing on a notepad looking file. i cannot open any program now.
all my IE shortcuts and word or excell shortcuts still look the same and function fine. this tells me the debug file could have been something wtih a program i was running and now attached itself to all my programs, but it's just a guess. i dont' know much !
i have carbonite and i'm now restoring all my files to see if it will put things how they were. it's my next best guess.

thinking back i think my friend shut down my anti virus while he was adjusting a printer setup on my computer. that was about two weeks ago. i have not noticed anything else weird though, so it's hard to say but if all four scanners are not picking up a threat, i think i probably don't have a virus and this is just some wierd windows debug program running??

anyway any and all thoughts are appreciated very much. as you can tell i'm no expert, but i run an online business from my laptop from home; so it's very important i have a well functioning machine.

thanks again for all your input and help. further thoughts needed....
mattjay

ok i am trying that now. i was able to download one of my linkbuilding softwares from the company and get the desktop icon to work fixed, i was also able to go into x86 files and move the spinner software back to the desktop and it is functioning. another software will only run if i find it in the x86 files and run as administrator. when i try to move it to the desktop and run as administrator, it gives an error. so i guess i can keep working on it. i'll let you know what hitman tells me.

hitman found a bunch of tracking cookies, and it found two program files for my one software which it marked malicious and quarantined. however everything remains the same. i managed to fix a few softwares on my desktop so that they would function, however all other applications in the start menu and the desktop open an obscure notepad file, including microsoft office, screenhunter, calculator, etc etc etc.
i'm wondering if i delete notepad program and resinstall it if this will fix the issue?
i tried restoring all my carbonite files and this did not fix it. i'm wondering if i use the back up disks i created when i first bought the computer if that will fix the problem/ although i don't know how to execute that...

any further ideas would be appreciated. it seems i do not have a virus, at least as far as i can tell with like 6 different scans. however now that all those softwares are installed, i cannot open any of them. as soon as i try, it gives me the D((( notepad file with crazy writing in it.

darn myself for opening the debug file