Hey I was wondering if someone could give me some advice or help me out.

Three months ago I built this comp and it's been working fine until this Monday. I turn on the computer and the first thing I notice is that my resolution has changed and that my shortcuts have been scattered around the desktop in a random fashion. The next thing I notice is whenever I use the scroll bar or the wheel on my mouse in any application, like Firefox, the computer becomes extremely choppy. Also when moving a window around the screen, it seems to reappear in its new location in a very strange way, it seems to reload from the top down or vice versa as if this is taking up a lot of resources. Whenever I watch a video the computer seems to act in a slightly choppy way, although it is nowhere near as bad as when I use the scrollbar/wheel. Finally of the three games I have installed, only one works. Morrowind seems to crash as soon as I hit play (Morrowind has encountered a problem and must close.), while Portal loads the Valve logo in an abnormally small window then simply disappears. Star Craft is the only game that's working fine.

Although I don't know much about computers, I know the basics. I defragment and disk cleanup my computer once a week. I scan with Norton 07 and NOD32 weekly as well. Although Norton didn't find a thing (surprise, surprise), NOD32 found an infected Win32 app and deleted it, but it didn't make any difference. At first I thought it might be a problem with my memory, like a worm eating away at it, but all of my apps load just as quickly as they did before. Video is not choppy and websites and files load quickly. In addition task manager and my motherboards probe shows no noticeable change in memory use.

I'm not sure what to do. I've tried to find someone in a similar situation on the net but came up empty. Can anyone give me some ideas or suggestions? I would greatly appreciate it.

My basic specs are:

Windows XP Professional SP2
4 gigs of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT graphics card
ASUS Motherboard (forgot the exact model)
On board sound card
Seagate 500 gig HD

Recommend you click on the Pre-Work link in my signature and follow the directions.

I will extend the customary welcome to the forum also Skupula

Just a quick update:

There is something I forgot to mention in my initial post. The 'stand by' option has also been greyed out even though it was available before this happened.

Also I can't seem to find safe mode. Whenever I hit F8 on startup it asks me to choose from where to boot up. It lists a floppy drive (I dont have one), my DVD burner, and my HD.

I have installed all the programs mentioned in your guide and am going to scan with them now, but note it will not be in safe mode since I can't seem to find the option.

if you still have problems after the prework I'd suggest a system restore its quick to doand may solve the problem very quickly

Attn: PCHF Staffer

This link needs to be moved to the HiJackThis! log forum.

Thanks...