after visiting a website w/ a million popups, i noticed notepad.exe trying to connect to the internet. i denied it w/ zonealarm, but then i couldn't open notepad. anyway, i found out that there were two copies thanks to someone else's post and i was able to remove it. but still i ran spybot and it said all my registry keys are changed. and i don't have permission to open my internet options in ie now. i deleted in the invalid keys w/ spybot (don't know if i should have, anyway there's still the backup of them)...but i don't think it's really fixed and i don't know how to get everything back to normal. is this a virus or something? i hope someone can reply w/ some tips because i'm not very smart w/ these things. thank you, i really appreciate it.

As far as accessing your Internet Options,do you have "Lock IE control panel against opening from within IE" checked under the SpyBot/Immunize button?

Only way for us to tell if your registry is clean, is to update Spybot and rescan and fix all the items in RED. Then, Reboot, Then download update HijackThis new version 1.97.0.7 http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/hijackthis.zip Unzip/extract all…and Double click on hijackthis.exe. Close All browser windows and Run HijackThis, Press Scan, and wait, Save the log, (the ‘scan’ button changes to ‘save log’) Edit>select All > copy and paste its contents here. Most of what it lists will be harmless or even essential, so don't fix anything yet. Post the full log including header info in reply. It will be reviewed by someone here.