The subject line is just part of the trouble. Let me first give the symptoms. About 10 days ago, we started having trouble accessing Hotmail via IE on my home PC which is loaded with XP. We could access it 2-3 times after a reboot, then the computer would lock up or freeze. We tried to load Live Update from Norton, but something prohibited us from doing so. Purchased another virus software package and found 17 corrupted files from 6 different viruses. Also had 6 hijack attempts. These were all corrected/deleted with Powerscan. This allowed us to access LU at the Norton site. I then did another virus search with Norton 2003 with the updates. It found nothing. OK, good to go, NOT. Even though the viruses were found and cured, the computer is still acting up. Same symptoms as before. I can get on to the Inet via AOL, and everything works fine as long as I don't access a hotmail account. Once that is done, CPU performance is compromised, almost exponentially, to the point of freezing the computer. I am just about ready to "FORMAT C" but thought I would give you guys a try. Any Ideas? On another note, I can access my hotmail account from my computer at work without trouble!!! Any help would be appreciated and thanks in advance. :-|

Start by going to the HijackThis Quick Start Page and read the instructions, then download the program. Run it, then post the log here.

One of the problems, too, might be Java. A corrupted Java Virtal Machine (JVM) can cause this sort of problem. I would download the real thing: the Sun JRE in any event. I recommend the "offline install" version -- the process is more reliable, and you have it if you need it again.