My spybot was working fine the other day, but then I think I got something malicious loaded on my system that was not detected by Spybot. So, I went and downloaded updates, and after that Spybot wouldn't load. The loading bar will come up, but it won't go to the next phase. I tried all the recommendations in the sticky thread to no avail. My system won't even run in safe mode, and the spybot.exe file is not even in the program file list, even when hidden files are shown. I also uninstalled, then reinstalled Spybot with no different results. Malware infection, or some other bug? BTW my system is Windows XP, browser was Opera, and anti-virus is Avira Antivir, which detects nothing.

Also, would system restore possibly fix this, or would it make it worse by erasing the identity of the problem making it harder to find?