Ok, yer kinda deep in the hole there... ouch... Oh, I run Norton Internet Security 2005, and it has always been a good firewall, and antivirus for me (although the firewall at default limits a lot of stuff... no biggie), also, does your comp have a system recovery feature that wipes out yer comp and brings it back to the original settings? Also, I use Firefox religiously... lol. Also, couldn't you just back your music up to cd's? I mean, they aren't just one giant 5GB file... you can split them all up and organize in ~15CD's. I just recently wiped out my computer and cleaned it up (I toyed around a bit too much with Windows ntoskrnl.exe file (Window's boot screen... fun) and couldn't get it to start it at all... luckily, I had backed up, so yep...) and the cleanup and restore only took 3 days (as in 18 hours a day, yes, I'm that crazy... lol). Don't worry about it, as long as you can still do all of the basic and essential stuff, you should be able to last, so long as you don't play around with the boot screen... it's a Death Wish for your comp... lol. That's all I have to say for now, good luck with your comp... and don't forget to keep crunching... lol

Don't panic if ya still got an O/S [else-wipe it clean and install Linux.hahaha joke!]
it sounds like y'all got a scumbag HiJacker imbeded in M$IE.... stick with Mozilla/FireFox and 'GOOGle' on Valuesoft ADAWARE install and join 'Computercops' for their EXCELLANT anti-malware program [called] HIjackTHIS !
after 100 hrs of tearing my hair out for a raped o/s, I recovered w/ HijackThis ! Thank God
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Um... isn't it Lavasoft Adaware SE?

There IS a way to fix the registry, though it is a very, very bad way,suppossing the problem is MISSING system critical keys, not EXTRA keys. Find someone who has just installed the very same OS as you on a machine with the same hardware specs - say, a classmate of yours who ordered the same laptop who hasn't installed much, get that person to export the entire registry, send the file to you, and import the whole lot. Such a file would be over 30 megabytes big, though, and might overwrite some of your settings with the default settings and other stuff that comes with a bare windows. The person must have used a fresh install after reformat WITHOUT installing anything else before that to avoid conflicting and orphaned keys. I can guarentee, though, that there WILL be plenty of orphaned keys, so you would have to run a registry cleaner and registry defragmenter to fix all the holes.

This is rather the most drastic. Kinda like strapping yourself to a nuclear rocket to get yourself out of your very deep hole; you might end up in space and glow in the dark. But short of doing a reformat, those are my 2 cents.

Edit: Analysis. Firstly, I don't know how you're going to find someone with the same machine as yours who hasn't installed anything. Secondly, the registry of every machine contains many keys unique to that machine, including OS user data. So, no ball. Unless you can identify which sections you cut large chunks out off, andobtain an export of those sections.

I'm sorry, but I think not only are you in a deep hole, the top of the hole has almost closed up, save for a small square of light. And we can't really bring in the jackhammer, because that would bury you in debree.