Hello all, I am at my wits end with this laptop and it is about to find it's way into the trash! I hope you can help me. Here is a breakdown of the situation...

2 or 3 weeks ago I encountered a trojan virus on laptop. Was able to remove virus with adaware and spybot after clearing all cookies, cache and internet history. Computer was working fine again. Then I bought an external hard drive and backed up the D drive onto it to clear this laptop up for school. Back up went fine. Also directly backed up a few files from C drive onto external hard drive. Then started to remove unwanted programs from add/remove programs window. After removing a couple programs the computer froze, the screen went black for a second and when the screen reappeared multiple programs were now missing completely. The programs were still listed on the add/remove programs menu but when clicked on the message was that the program was only partially there or completely gone. Didn't think much of it since I wanted most programs gone anyway but now java is not working. I have uninstalled and reinstalled many times. Even going as far as to remove it completely from the system registry. Each time it installs it says it installs correctly but still will not work in any browser (ie, mozilla, chrome). Also I found out today that quicktime is behaving the same way. This laptop is only a year old and WAS in very good condition. I just want it to perform the way it used to so I can use it for school. Also just in case it matters. This computer came with vista on it but I do not have a hard copy of the OS. I only have a nonbootable back up dvd that I made immediately after purchasing the computer.

Thank you severely for any help you can offer!