When someone brings a computer in to have malware removed, I know we are in for a learning experience. The most recent was no exception. This particular computer had been left alone with a youngster and a new DSL Internet connection. Boy did that child have some fun. The owner of the computer however was not happy. Items such as "All Programs" were missing from the Start Menu, certain executables could not be run and the desktop had been hijacked by a rouge program or two.
The inability to run executables in Normal Boot Mode or in Safe Mode made installing anti-malware programs rather difficult. To top it off the main infection had stealthed itself with invisible files and registry entries. The malware was eventually cleaned off but reversing the damage, particularly the disappearing desktop shortcut icons, was tedious at best.
The web was searched using a variety of keywords for an easy fix for the desktop. Either this malware is so new that few have reported this behavior or we didn't use the proper search phrases. As it turns out the fix is simple and we were using the wrong search phrases. At any rate, perhaps one more web page will make the answer easier for the next malware victim to find. I suppose the difficulty in removing the malware could be used as an excuse for not thinking of the repair solution right off the bat.
For those recovering from malware problems, the malware found on this computer happened to be the rouge programs Vista AntiVirus, Zinaps AntiSpyware, several variations of zlob, SmitFraud, and Zango to name a few. The clbdll.dll infection was probably the most insidious of all. To tackle this one a boot CD is a must have because this was the stealth portion of the infections. With so many differing bugs it is difficult to say to which it and the clbdriver.sys files belonged.
To make a long story short there are two ways to restore the shortcut icons that one of these bugs had hidden. The easy way is shown here. Right click a clear area of the desktop. Next hover on View for Windows Vista or Arrange Icons By for Windows XP. On the resulting sub-menu check Show Desktop Icons unless you are wanting to hide the icons. In that case, you will want to uncheck the Show Desktop Icons menu item.
For those that are interested in the hard way, start searching the registry under HKey_Current_User for entries that affect the desktop like I did. The easy way was so simple it plum eluded me, as Jimmy Buffet once sang. I will help you out though. The full key path is HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\Advanced. The value of the REG_DWORD HideIcons is set to zero(0) to show desktop shortcut icons or to one(1) to hide them. Had that been the only thing wrong the job would have been easy!
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