I have been fighting viruses, higackers and such for a while now. After running all of the suggested programs everything looked pretty good. Then I downloaded Registry Mechanic. It did clean a lot of dead shortcuts and such out of msconfig but every since I have had a host of very strange problems. Here are the ones I have noticed so far, I find new ones everytime I am on.

*No Search Companion (Blank)
*No System Restore (Blank)
*No Version, Cypher Strength or Product ID in the "Help\About Internet Explorer" window and the "OK" button does not function
*In Internet Explorer - Edit\Find, the find next button is grey and does not work
* Windows Media Player basic works but version 10 has an internal error
*Can get into email (Hotmail, Google etc.) but can not click on the links to open an email
*Excel and PowerPoint work fine but the Word files are now associated with WordPad and when I try to open it through "New Office Document" in "Start" it says "The program associated with the selected template can not be started, or the program can not use the selected template."
*No java games, movies etc. will load at all

I am running Windows XP Pro with SP2.
I have uninstalled/reinstalled SP2, Java Runtime and Windows Media and IE 6.

I am at a loss, other than to reformat, any ideas?

I have also posted my HijackThis log in the spyware and virus forum as suggested below.

welcome lauraword to dal the onine computer help forum

could you please click on the link under my signature called owens help and followthe advice then post fresh hijack this log but you must update your version of hijackthis first as version 1.99 is now available

if you need further help to do this please come back to me

also can you please podt your hijack this log in the spyware and virus forum

hope this helps