The laptop's all set up - and dd received it on Tuesday. For now we'll try open office. She does have a desktop pc with word if she needs it. And at school they use Mac's. So no matter what we use at home, it won't be quite the same as in school. abreeze - thanks for the link. It's beyond anything she or I will do now - but one or both of us might get more versed in powerpoint over time. That's a helpful comparison. I created recovery disks - but when I went to create a password reset disk, the laptop kept asking me to insert a disk. There was a disk in there. I even switched disks in case one was bad. But it was birthday day - so I figured I'd get to this later. Well - it came back and bit me in the butt. Birthday night had some trauma. After dinner, my mother fell backwards and hit her head on the sidewalk. I took her to the ER. My daughter was distraught - and the parent controls had logged her off at 9pm. Husband thought this was a reasonable exception - so he logged into the admin account for her. She immediately eliminated the time controls. No big deal, I thought - I'll reset them another time. Somehow she tricked my husband into entering the admin password again - told him she'd restarted the computer by accident. Well - that sneak had gotten him to enter the password in a field that allowed her to change it. She changed the passwords and locked us out of the laptop. So this is where that password reset disk would have been helpful - to override what she did and reset a new admin password. So this is partly a note to people about the important of creating a password reset disk (or set up on flash drive). I'd never even heard of this before. We're at the beach with my daughter and friend - it's instead of a birthday party. So we're not having the confrontation with this weekend. Monday - we tell her she has to hand back the reins for the admin account (or no laptop). The joys of parenting preteens. It took her less than 24 hours to violate most of the terms of the contract she signed. Sure wish I'd had that reset password disk. When I get admin control back, I'll be sure to create one somehow. (I assume at this point my only option is getting her to give me that new password she created.) Thanks. Lynn.

Wow. So glad I posted. I didn't even realize the rootkit thing was a big issue (and I'm not sure that's what I saw). Avast was scanning - and it didn't even come up with the usual alarming "found something" screen. It just seemed to pause and said this had to be stopped/removed first. It never even showed up as an infected file. So it seems I have to deal with this rootkit issue first - before the possible device driver issue - or system restore. Is it possible that this rootkit issue is the only one going on? Thank you for the caution about not using my password. I didn't do any online purchases. The only password I would have entered was for my gmail account. Luckily I don't use that password for my commerce, banking, etc accounts. So I want to be sure the order of things: update and run malwarebytes first? then do the LzD removal? I'm not sure if that's an online scan program - or is there actually a company I will be asking assistance from? Don't know if this is related. Earlier today when I was using the computer (my main PC) do look at emails, it logged me out and said my gmail was locked and would be inactive due to too much activity (from pop accounts) - or browser compatibility issues (I have Firefox and have had some gmail/Firefox issues from time to time). As it happens, I can still access my gmail account from my laptop. I didn't try again from my PC - and itseems that I shouldn't for now. Now I had also used my gmail from my laptop, my daughter's pc and my smartphone - all just today. I assumed that's why I got logged off. But could this be a result of my gmail account getting hijacked (or whatever it would be?). Thanks everyone for your timely responses. I didn't realize it was quite this serious when I first posted - just that my PC said it was serious. Lynn. PS - used2bsane - I am not that knowledgeable so your instructions above were great and much needed. It seems that I have to address the rootkit issue first, however. I'll be posting back with my progress.

here are some links for you to look at which may help, no promises unfortunately. Hotfix Download Available you did not mention if you are using IE6 or 7. Similar problems and resolutions note this is specifically for 2000 based systems, it does give info as to causes for this type error however. have you recently upgraded your windows media player? in some cases it seems to be causing those type errors. Readme for Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP Also please try this, go to your browser and clear out what ever you have in it for your home page, change it to google or msn or some well known site, or leave it blank, clean out all of your cache, temp internet files, cookies, history, etc in your browser, close all instances of the browser and see if that makes a difference. One thing that definitely is causing this is an improperly scripted website so it is possible that what ever site you have as your homepage could be causing it. Also please make sure you are using the very latest version of java, if not update it. you can use the secunia tool to see what needs updating. Online Software Inspector You did not mention which version of firefox you are using either, if you have not moved to version 3 yet there was still just a new update for 2.0 versions, have you done all recent updates to your particular version? 2.0.0.15 is the latest version of the 2.0 firefox. Do you have any added toolbars on your browser such as yahoo, etc? if so try removing them restarting browser and see if that helps. You should be able to go to add remove programs and get rid of toolbars. Yahoo has specifically been named in many instances. Since this is often a badly written script issue there are a LOT of things that could be causing it which is why there are so many things to try. Please let us know if you get results.

Now I am purely baffled. I cannot get into Safe Mode with networking or even plain Safe Mode. The screens with drivers stop right away, and I know that there should be many of them. Then after a message that "we apologize...." I use F8 again, choose, and the same thing. If I do nothing more, it boots into Windows. So, I thought I'd try a system restore. I tried every date this week, even before the MS updates, and could not restore. Sooooo, not going to fool with this much longer. Maybe tomorrow or Monday I'll use my full backup and just restore the whole thing. All I'll need to do after that is the August MS updates. I'm wondering if one of the updates caused this problem as Secunia worked fine as recently as a week ago. Can't understand the inability to do the system restore, either. Nothing else seems amiss, and I just ran complete scans yesterday with Avast, SAntispyware, and Malwarebytes----all came up clean.