Ok, I have more info. The woman who gave me the dell also has a computer owned by the same guy and she is denied access to anything that would alter anything on the computer. Her computer is running windows 2000 pro. The guy who owned these computers designed parts for airplanes. I'm wondering if he may have had some sort of a security setup to keep people out of his files. When I went to her computer in set up, the passwords for supervisor and user hadn't been set up. How do I gain access as administrator? When I go to user accounts in control panel I can't access any of the info. On log In I tried putting in administrator as user and the new password I created in set up but no luck. Is it possible I'm just running into some sort of intense security instead of malware. Also, would a recovery cd work in a case like this? If so do you recommend any one over another. Thank You.