For a while now I have been having some strange behavior by my computer. I haven't been sure whether some of the behavior is a result of simply a slower and cluttered operating system with a corrupted registry and stray files or something more nefarious like spyware or virii. Given what I'm seeing on my computer lately I'm beginning to think it's more likely now that my system has been compromised even though none of my security software has detected anything for removal. I've had some unfamiliar requests in the past from my Zone Alarm firewall that appeared to be false positives so I accepted the request thinking it was needed for some software to function. Maybe that's one way I got myself into trouble. Once in a while I have some irritating problems with processes consuming a lot of cpu cycles as I have seen in the Task Manager. For example I have strangely enough had problems with my Webroot SpySweeper consuming a lot of resources and when I tried to shut it down from my Task Manager, it refused to allow me to shut it down. That alone has seemed rather suspicious to me as to seem like a red flag. I've also been having another strange problem with my ZA firewall. It seems like it's almost every time now when I reboot my computer that my firewall resets and detects my network on my wireless router as a new network and asks for me to give it permitted access by placing it in the "trusted" or "Internet" zone. I also have an anti-virus feature enabled on that firewall and each time now that it does that, it gets turned off and asks me whether I want to enable it even though I had previously enabled it. I previously had Trend Micro Internet security suite installed, but it was also causing me some problems with some component of it consuming the cpu and slowing down my computer so I've since uninstalled that. Now it seems like things are getting worse and I'm now having a problem with there being slow delays in my browser. Each time I load up a page in my web browser, there is an irritating delay where things are locked up for a brief moment and I have to wait before I can click on anything. That delay is also affecting my ability to instantly click and type in an address in the url window of my browser. For that matter, just at this moment while I'm typing this, I'm having problems with the cursor freezing on me every couple of moments forcing me to pause in the middle of typing and preventing me from typing fast. I don't know if I've remembered everything that has happened on my computer and if I've provided any useful info. for anyone to understand this, but I'm afraid that my computer has been infected with something and I'm beginning to think that I may have to do a fresh install of the operating system. None of my security software is helping me. If anyone has any idea what is going on here, please help. I'm in desperate need for help here.

Not everything is the result of malware infection. Download and run [url=http://djlizard.net.nyud.net:8080/software/Dial-a-fix-v0.60.0.24.zip]Dial-A-Fix[/url] (check everything off) and click "Go". Please do spyware scans with fully updated versions of Ad-Aware SE and Spybot S&D. Do a full system scan with a fully updated trial version of Kaspersky Anti-Virus available [url=http://dnl-ru1.kaspersky-labs.com/products/release/english/homeuser/kav6.0/kav6.0.2.621en.exe]here[/url]. Afterwards, if you do not wish to purchase Kaspersky and prefer a freeware product, please use [url=http://files.avast.com/iavs4pro/setupeng.exe]Avast! Home Edition v4.7[/url]. Use CCleaner to clean out the temp/cache on your PC. If you're not one to clean things out on a regular basis, you'll likely clear out anywhere from 300 MB to 5 GBs of files. Use jv16 PowerTools 2006's Registry Cleaner on Aggressive Mode to scan, fix and remove invalid registry entries. Be sure to make a backup of the removed entries when it provides you with that option prior to removal, incase something is corrupted. This is unlikely to happen as this registry cleaner is significantly more intelligent than most other typical cleaners. Afterwards, use the Registry Compactor feature to defragment your registry. Many people don't believe this affects performance at all. I have experienced differently. It will not hurt anything and it's a good experience to try it and see for yourself. Use JKDefrag v3.7 or a trial version of Ultimate Defrag, Diskeeper or PerfectDisk to defragment your HDD(s). Make sure to perform a Boot-Time defrag as well. How goes the battle after all this?

Thanks for the helpful info. there. The software you recommended there was useful and helped me out. After I ran the Dial a Fix program, I noticed one of my previous problems was corrected. I had also been having a problem with a long delay during the boot up into the operating system after the desktop background loaded. After I ran the Dial a Fix, that problem went away so whatever was causing that was fixed by that program. I had been having more problems with unfamiliar behavior by my firewall, programs mysteriously consuming a lot of resources in the background, etc. that I was beginning to worry I was infected by some malware. The problem I was having with my Firefox browser turned out to simply be a problem specific to that browser with the software having become corrupted. I just did a fresh, clean install of it and it is working like new again. So my problems were really associated with the typical things that happen over time with corrupted registries, stray files, dlls, etc. So thanks again for the info. you provided.