Hey Freebase...just thought I'd stop in and update you on my PC, since you helped me so much:
I decided early this week, after not doing anything with it last weekend, to just wipe it out and do a fresh XP install. So I booted from the CD in preparation, then saw there was an option to repair an existing install, so I thought I'd give that a shot. This got me back into Windows and I was hopeful, but there were still bogus antivirus popups. However, this allowed me to go ahead and back up the remaining few things onto my external drive, so at that point why the hell NOT do a clean install? So I did it yesterday...feels kind of nice.

I'll be bringing the PC home tonight and getting back in working order this weekend.
It was a nice break not having the internet at home though, hope I don't fall back into over-usage.