Virus from AIM (Valentines day pics) now cant use regedit, msconfig,task manager

I got a virus/trojan or something from a link in one of my buddys profiles, the link said something like "Valentines day pictures". it was making an away message with the link i clicked that gave me the virus pop up when i'd get online and would try to do it while i was offline but it couldnt. I finally ( i think) got rid of it, but now I cant get into my regedit, msconfig, or task manager...what do i do??I have Norton system works, mcafee (privacy and personal firewall plus), Ad-Aware SE Personal, and Microsoft anti-spyware.. help please.

A possible fx/workaround.

We clicked on a AIM link about pictures about 5 days ago. Yesterday I tried to run RegEdit and it did not stay open. I read some posts here, and found that TaskMgr and msconfig also would not open.

This is what I did, and now they stay open.
***Note I am not a computer expert nor do I play one a TV. But I do know enough to be dangerous.

Bottom line, what I think fixed the problem was the deletion of files in winnt/prefetch. Files named something like RegEdit????.pf, TaskMgr???.pf and so on.

Long Story,
I followed most of the recommendations of another post by getting the latest definition files for AdAware, VX2 cleaner plug-in, Spybot, McAfee, and Stinger. I uninstalled AIM and other programs I was unsure about. Booted in Safe Mode, Ran Adaware, Spybot, Stinger and McAfee. Deleted what they found. This took quit a long time.

Ran Regedit, yes it stays open in Safe Mode. Backed up
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
Then Removed entries like "WildTangent" and others I was un sure of.

Booted to Normal mode. Regedit still would not stay open. Based on another post, I copied winnt\system32\taskmgr.exe to C:\MyStuff and renamed it to myTMrg.exe. I then deleted winnt\system32\taskmgr.exe. Opened C:\MyStuff\myTMrg.exe, and it stayed open. I sorted by User Name and ended processes that had my user name and looked suspicious after I searched for where the EXE file was and did a properties on. I searched the registry for these file names and deleted most of what I found. I deleted the file, too. This is when I found the prefetch files and deleted them too. I rebooted, and everything stayed open. I downloaded and ran "windows-xp-prefetch-clean-and-control.exe".

Hope this helps someone.

pfff do u know your virus name ?
coz if u jsut go to symantec web site and get a removal tool, get a program from internet that shows u current processes then close the "virus" process irf u dont know which one it is jsut close all of em lol , for except explorer , and then try running regedit , if it doesnt work then u can get a registry editor , but it still doesnt feel liek u r working on good old windows so then just bacckp data and reinstall windows

I used to have the same sort of thing. I searched for a removal tool and found this one here (http://www.jayloden.com/VirusClean.htm) .

but it still doesnt feel liek u r working on good old windows so then just bacckp data and reinstall windows
Ah, the good old Windows repairing method: complete reinstallation.

But viruses can get backed up, too.