My computer is back home (with a full refund) - yippee!

Thanks, Dmitriy. I checked and found out that I didn't really need to wait for the email from HP - all I had to do was hit F10 while my computer was starting up, and there it was, a built-in system for rolling everything back to the factory settings!

I haven't done that yet, because I finally found a checkpoint that my computer was willing to use to do a system restore (I had to go through several!) If that doesn't solve all the problems, at least now I know that I can do a roll back myself if I have to.

And I definitely will continue protecting my computer; even if a virus does get through every now and then, I'm way too cautious not to use anti-virus and anti-spyware programs!

Thanks also to rlhanson for the links and advice! So you loathe yahoo too? I had nothing but trouble from them, and on top of that, their customer service/tech support is awful!

I have started a computer in safe mode before but I don't remember how to do it (that was with my old computer, and I was given instructions at that time.) Uhm, why will I be disabling startup items and restarting in safe mode?

Here's a question for everyone: does anyone know anything about "VirtualTruck"? Ever since my computer's most recent problems, whenever it starts or restarts I get a box titled "Rebooting VirtualTruck..." telling me to "Please make sure the VirtualTruck CD is in the CDROM drive." I have no idea what that is! I've tried doing searches for it, but my computer can't find it anywhere despite the fact that it's right there in the middle of the screen. Seriously annoying! Any suggestions?