I recently got a free gateway 300s system which I gave to a neighbor. It is only 1 month old, and recently when they attempted to log into the computer, their taskbar was unusable(cursor would turn to an hourglass) and all their desktop icons were gone. I booted into safe mode, same issue. I tried loading last known good and got same issue. I then reloaded Win XP doing the repair option, and now my icons are back, and my taskbar is fully functional, but when I click on any icon or program, I get an hour glass on my cursor for a moment and then nothing. It is almost like the computer is running in some sort of windows Demonstration mode (if there is such a beast). The system also runs SUPER slow, such that when I log out, rather than it quickly doing so, it shows you each device it is shutting down and making you acknowlege each one. Gateway's answer is of course that I have a virus and need to Fdisk the system. The person I gave the system too has not backup up anything, and this is not an option I truely want to consider. Any ideas? sound like a virus?