many thanks for your help thus far! i'm sorry for not writing back sooner; i decided to take your advice but wanted to try out a few new applications for the new install. ultimately, a few of the new anti malware programs i picked up found and disabled a few more pieces of malware that were on my system which precipitated the infection somehow jumping onto a program that i have used for years without incidence, webroot's 'windows washer.' -it cannot be coincidence that this is the program i open most often, right next to wordpad. i installed comodo firewall and boclean and somehow that slowed my system to a literal crawl (windows explorer and other apps took over a minute to open -i literally developed a nosebleed dealing with the pc at that point) soon after that, spybot began stopping operations that i did not initiate which is something that never happened before and ultimately i now find myself unable to log into windows.
here are my questions for you. I'd like some advice as to how to proceed from this point out. it's obvious that i'm dealing with a VERY nasty infection here. the problem is, i've got about 190 gb of data i'd like to recover on that ntfs hdd. i'm not sure if it's safe but i'm planning on using a 'slax' linux live cd to access and copy those files (unless you have a better method to recommend).
as i type, i am using a backup installation of windows 98 on another hdd and am currently connected to the internet by the same ip as my infected computer; it is interesting to note that i've been using windows 98 for years without incidence but after switching to xp for little more than a month, problems started appearing like this; i guess the old os is just not as attractive a target for attack (i switched over mainly for game compatibility). my question here is, should i ask my isp to change my ip #? i'd do it on principle except that the connection i have right now is pretty good -i know all the settings and how to optimize it- and i don't really want to hold a phone to my ear for half an hour for service.
i'd like a recommendation for a safe, easy to configure firewall that has a very small memory footprint; based on my research, i thought that was comodo but... well, honestly, i don't know what bogged down my pc but something went awry and it was after i installed a firewall and an antitrojan application which is the other thing i'd like a recommendation for. I'd like something that is small, effective and doesn't take a lot of resources. some of the programs i had tried were effective but used huge amounts of memory and cputime. Many thanks for your help so far; i really appreciate you doing this and i hope i'm not overstepping my bounds by making these requests.
