Tonight I finally figured out what was wrong with my notebook. The first symptom I notice was a general slowing of the system. And to my horror, Folder Options under Tools was gone. My antivirus acted strangely and my Spybot Search and Destroy refused to update itself. Then I found a forum which described the symptoms so well. I had Brontok lurking inside my hard disk. And after searching the net forums for a solution, I found one: Brontok Washer. Thank heavens it worked. But now after such a scare, I'm backing up everything. *shiiiver...*