As has been said in another branch to this thread, trying to fix a problem
like this can be very frustrating and time consuming and it is often doomed
to failure.

If you have the money resources, I would suggest that you buy a replacement
hard drive and clean install your system on it. It is seldom necessary to
get the same brand as the original drive; just make sure it has the same
interface (Sata vs IDE), and equal or more storage space than the original.
In recent years, some computer manufacturers have designed their notebooks
to allow very simple and easy access to replacing hard drives and memory
sticks, and have a downloadable manual with illustrations to do the
replacement, as well as specifications for replacement drives/memory. On
this clean install, make sure your AV/malware suite is up to date, and
install the minimum set of software to get your necessary work done. Work
the system a while to veryify that it is stable. Purchase a USB case to
hold the original hard drive; this will give you access to all your data on
this old drive. Scan it with your AV/malware software. Over time, install
the rest of the things you want on the new drive.

The nice thing about this plan is that if you find that you have forgotten
to get some key piece of information that can only be obtained while running
from the original drive, you can switch back to get that info, saving it to
a thumbdrive, then switch back to the new drive and use the info on the
thumbdrive.

If you are uncomfortable with doing this yourself, your computer repair
place should be able to do it for you. Just make sure they know to keep the
old hard drive and not attempt to 'clean it up' or format it, and to install
it in a USB case and verify that its data is accessible.

-Paul Randall

"popular" <brenden.cline******.com> wrote in message
news:042dcd15fd9fe8756a02a8d72172bc82@nntp-gateway.com...[color=blue]
>
> Thanks for the input everyone, one thing I didn't mention is that before
> I moved into my homestay, I was quarantined (swine flu and all) at a
> hotel for a week. I used my laptop with no problem there with a voltage
> converter (so that's no issue) and wireless internet, which makes me
> skeptical of if it could be really be a virus/hacker. Three questions
> (basically):
>
> 1) Is there a way to stop or disable the startup programs from loading,
> besides msconfig? I can't really run an antivirus scan or anything else
> since it's so slow and becomes unresponsive before it can do much.
>
> 2) What makes it seem like a virus? I have Norton Endpoint (from my
> school) and Windows Firewall turned on, for what it's worth :/
>
> 3) And how can I salvage my computer without reinstalling
> Windows/reformatting? I can get to a computer repair place here, but if
> I go in without knowing what's wrong/what needs to be done I'm afraid
> they'll just wipe the harddrive which wouldn't be good...[/color]