A friend of mine heard about how I fixed another friends computer when it was laden with software, so he asked me to give it a go. It's for a friend so I don't charge the standard fee normally just to it for free lunch or beer or something. Anyways his problem is quite a bit more complicated. For starters a virus scan revealed 2000 + viruses but stinger didn't detect any. He had over 1500 spybot search and destroy problems, and had an issue whenever he clicked on an icon on his computer it would try to install microsoft money. I cleaned up most of the problems, and the computer *seemed* usable to me after I left, bear in mind his kazaa folder is 9 gigs, I asked him if I could uninstall kazaa but he said no. Anyways ctrl+alt+delete brings up the task manager for like 1 second then it shuts down. This is the result of some sort of program interfering, but I can't tell which. The run button is also no longer present on the start bar so in order to get into msconfig I had to find the program manually, but there are no out of the ordinary programs listed to start up. I'm about ready to just do a clean install, but being that he no longer has the driver discs etc, it will take a while and I'd prefer not to if there is a feasible alternative. Any ideas? Oh he also described a problem where the screen is just white after he opens up the laptop when its been sitting for a while, but I'm 99% sure that was heat related...he just leaves his laptop sitting on his bed so the fan intake is clogged by the sheets, it sits like this on for 7-8 hours a day.