tinag

Well, I'm glad those steps showed you some progress. I'm sure there's more that can be pursued on the system optimization side, too (if you haven't defragged lately, that might be something to consider), but let's finish ruling out malware first before you start that.

Your HijackThis log is clean. Now we're going to run a couple of advanced tools that'll show us well-hidden nasties. As always, print out these instructions so you have them for your reference, and read everything before proceeding so you can ask questions in advance if necessary..

Right-click on http://www.silentrunners.org/Silent%20Runners.vbs, choose Save As..., and save it to your desktop. Make sure you have disabled any programs that may block/disable scripts (like your anti-virus or anti-spyware programs -- if you're going to disable these, then disconnect from the Internet for this step). Double-click Silent Runners to run it. This will take a few minutes, and will create a file called "Startup Programs" followed by your computer name and current date. Open up that file and post all its contents here in your next post.

Download StartDreck. (If you have trouble downloading it, right-click on the link, select Save Target As... and select a location to save it.)
Unzip into its own folder and start the program:
Click Config and Mark All. Then uncheck the following boxes only:
System/Running Process -> List Modules
System/Drivers -> NT Services
System/Drivers -> NT Kernel- and FS-drivers
Click OK.

Click Save and select the location to save the log file (default is the same folder as the application). When it's done, post the log in this thread.

These logs can be pretty long, so you may have to split them across a couple of posts -- that's okay.

Also, can you give us some system specs? Let us know what kind of processor you've got, how big your hard drive is and how much space is available on it, and how much RAM you have.

Tina