Microsoft Security Essentials has a setting in the rear that helps somewhat for faster scans.. I set mine to limit use to 100% of cpu ... default, if I recall right, was 30%. MSE no matter what the cpu % is set .. seems to always give other programs 1st priority, and sits & waits for the cpu to be unbusy for its little fun fast time slices. Thats probably why it seems to take so long to finish an update or scan. The newer version seems to update fractionally much smaller definition downloads. Which is nice when you push a manual scan!

Welcome... I might run CCleaner again .. it really should take just moments unless you have Tons & Tons of old outdated files. I don't think ive ever seen it run more than maybe 3 or 4 minutes. Mostly less than one minute. That's a good program to run, for basic trash cleaning, about once per week. This post was edited by mikie on Mon, Mar 11, 13 at 23:56

Ok this is simple now. Just use Google and type edit registry and millions of hits appear. Look through the first few and you will find many tutorials with good graphics showing step by step. You are nervous and rightly so because of all the warnings about messing up a registry. HOWEVER, this is nothing more than making a correction to a spelling error if you look at it that way. First time just go into the registry working down to the needed page. Once there you can walk away and grab a coffee if you feel stress, or you can make the simple correction to the one entry in question. Those of us who help others always need to stress the importance of caution in the registry because of those who are so impetuous. my ex son in law is a good example, he goes into a computer like a bull in a china shop. Luckily I do not have to clean up behind him anymore :) Now I have learned how to put stuff into a flash drive and save my files. Why? You are going to back up the registry as a precaution, nothing more. To save your work, assuming it is stored in My Documents. Insert the thumb drive, cancel the popup right click Start click Explore Now you see Windows Explorer opened Look near the top on the left side and right click on My Documnts click Properties in the pop up Look to see how large the My Documents folder is and if you have enough room on the thumb drive. We'll assume you have room. OK.... Click My Documents to highlight On the right side click the top item to highlight Hold down the Shift key and tap the End key now all the right side is highlighted right click anywhere on the highlighted data click Copy in the pop up Scroll down the left side now to find the thumb drive right click on it in the pop up click Paste and the contents are copied to your thumb drive - or any other drive you designate. Done! Simple huh?

it sounds like you have an infection that has blocked you from getting programs that would try to clean it, see if it lets you go to any of these online scans to run. ESET Online Scanner BitDefender Online Scanner try this link to get the direct exe of malwarebytes it should open directly on your pc as a download box for the mbam exe. save it to your pc download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware to your desktop. Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware * Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program. * At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, then click Finish. * If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version. * Once the program has loaded, select Perform full scan, then click Scan. * When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results. * Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected. * When completed, a log will open in Notepad. Please save it to a convenient location. The log can also be found here: C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\Logs\log-date.txt * Please post contents of that file in your next reply. if it will not let you run it as mbam.exe you may have to rename it, let me know