DaniWeb IT Discussion Community - IE Browsing Slow, Can't Download Anything

Shew..now that this page has finally loaded, I can explain my problem and hope you wonderful people here can help me.

This has been going on since about Saturday. I can connect with my DSL. I have already called the DSL place and they said they don't see a problem on that end, but they could be wrong. But as soon as I connect to the internet I go and click on IE and open it up - it takes about 15 mins for a page to load, my pages use to load in 10 seconds. My Windows LIVE Messenger WON'T connect, but If I use the Windows Messneger that comes with the computer(same as MSN) it will. Also, when I go to download something Spybot or any program it takes a little while to download and then once it gets done, it tells me its not a vaild Win32 app. Or I need a disk. Or the file may be corrupt. Also, I can't update my Ad-Aware defintions or update my Avast!

I tried to download HijackThis to see if I could get a log for you all, but it won't let me download anything. Please help. I am desperate for anything.

I am using Windows XP Pro-IE 7.0

Also, something I might add. A couple of months ago, I got this little blue star ( I call it the blue star of death) in my taskbar saying that my computer might be at risk. It's from Microsoft. Something about my copy of Windows is not legal - would this be causing my IE to act like this?

Thank you for your time,
Sarah