hey howard thanks for that insanely quick reply. i d/led the new HJT and i get the same list. I did the online av scanning and it crashed my computer, rebooted fine and everything though. you mentioned that i had some nasty infections, can you please detail what in the log is the bad registry stuff? is it the "unknown user" lines that point it out? i want to know what it is so i can recognize it in the future. anyways gonna reformat soon anyways, so i'll be waiting until i get a post back before i format. thanks again and this will save me alot of headaches in the future.