[cheebacheeba]

Found the disk under the bed.
I might throw that in next time it demands the boot disk and see what happens. As for virus/spyware type stuff, I downloaded and ran a few programs (I usually use spybot and avast), I got the trial AVG which is always pretty solid, and got something else from the grisoft site called ewido anti-spyware...spent the last few hours doing systemwide scans with all of them, and yeah, found quite a bit of stuff.

So, if this doesn't sort out the whole lot, I'm gonna reformat the thing, and reinstall the currently updated anti-virus/spyware stuff BEFORE I go online at all...