yeah, that must've been it. wasn't my idea, i didn't even know it existed, haha.

on top of the not being able to system restore, apparently internet explorer wasn't working in specific situations. i don't use it so it didn't bug me, but still. for some reason the program media monkey refused to open for me (if i hadn't mentioned that already); i'm sure there was more but i can't recall because it wasn't happening to me.

anyhow, we backed up our **** on an external drive and just reformatted the hard drive. maybe overkill, but there was a lot of crap on it (had like 5 gb free) anyways and everything seems to be working fine now. funny thing is i'm just going to stick with using this new media player foobar2000 instead of WMP.

so it all worked out pretty well. thanks though - much appreciated!

Well I'm glad things worked out for you. Personally it sounds like a nasty virus you guys picked up, which are often times more troublesome to get rid of than reformatting anyway if you've got your important stuff backed up.
It's sorta like doing Spring Cleaning with the Incredible Hulk, but it gets the job done. A fresh clean slate is always a good thing in any regard.

Just make sure you invest in a good virus program (I vouch for AVAST, and it's free), and you should be able to do your thing without much worry.

Until recently I never had any trouble with Avast but I have to be honest I think It's missing things, My HDD health dropped like a bomb the other day and pc froze up (Fixed now) but Avast found nothing.

Maybe the trouble wasn't caused by a security risk like a virus. Are you saying Avast should do all sorts of maintenance? Not sure I agree there.

Anyways, I'd vouch for it too. It's a great program - once you disable the sound. A harmless sentence like "virus database has been updated" can be quite spooky with the right timing, like maybe sometime at night when you're in your drawers with the lights off checking just one more thing before you crawl back into bed.

we have both avast and zonealarm actually... not sure how it happened. probably from downloading music from some sketchy site or something.

^ Yea that's strange. Avast usually picks everything up right away, and even then I scan anything I download. But if the virus isn't in Avasts virus database, then.. ya know.

I have a slight problem, not a big thing (I don't think) but when I type my keyboard jumps like mid sentence and I start typing in the middle? Could you help me stop it pretty please :)?

Are you typing on your laptop by any chance? If you are it probably jumps because your hand is hitting off the mouse pad as you type. It happens to me sometimes on my laptop. Best solution there is to turn off your mouse pad and use an ordinary USB mouse if you can.

Another thing you can do is disable the mouse clicking function on the touchpad. Typically, a touchpad has two "mouse buttons" under it that you use for clicking, but you can also just tap the touchpad to execute left button clicks. This tapping can be useful, but it often leads to unintentional clicking. If it's causing trouble, check the settings for your mouse in the control panel and see if you can turn the tap-click function off.

Or she could be dealing with a poltergeist...







Oh man where is Neapolitan when you need him.