Hey - recently I've been having some problems with this new laptop which is running xp professional. The first thing I noticed was that internet explorer stopped running - I would double click it and absolutely nothing happened at all. I've tried checking all the settings in internet options, scanned for spyware and adware with Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware, checked for viruses with a free Panda trial thing and AVG Antivirus. Panda DID detect Sasser I think, and removed it - my AVG hadn't detected it, even though when I downloaded a file by mistake, it told me the file was infected with a virus and I should scan my system.. I did and it found nothing. I'm guessing that's the one Panda found though.
But Internet Explorer just won't run at all - I've gone to the task manager to look at the processes, and it doesn't appear on the list of processes when I try and open it - or iexplorer.exe pops up on the processes for a milisecond and then disappears before the program opens. I have no idea why it's happening, but someone sent me Mozilla Firefox which works..I'd just like IE to work too.
But now I have a 2nd problem.. the last three nights, when I've shut down my computer in the way I always do, it turns off .. and then spontaenously restarts a few seconds after it's switched off!! So I have to turn it off by holding down the power button. I have no idea why these two things are happening but I'd really like some information/help!

you should use a different thing like opera hehe I would go install the new version of IE if i were you, and then maybe that should help take care of it, since you've been running adaware and have you done a virus scan? (I guess I might have just not seen it in your post if you said so) b4 installing the new version, uninstall it and just reinstall the version you have, see if that takes care of it, sometimes all it needs is that. firefox is a good version i would use that instead . about the computer just magically restarting, mine does it too, *shrugs* I just turn the power switch off in the back. I havn't really 'researched' into it why it does it yet.