Hi
mstlelc! Interesting read, that Malware thread... I'm glad you didn't permanently lose your data! I strongly suggest you make "extra" backups right now as well, burn everything to DVD's... You can never have too many copies of the important things in life...
Okay I'm going to take a quick stab in the dark, as your system appears to be giving the following symptoms:
Starting from your desktop, right-click on
My Computer, select
Manage. Once the window opens, from the tree-view on the left select
Device Manager. Expand the [+] next to
IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, then right-click on the channel to which your hard drive is connected and select
Properties. Under the
Advanced Settings tab,
if "PIO mode" is selected, this is your problem as it will greatly reduce the transfer speeds on your computer.
If this is the case, a simple fix is to uninstall your hard drive. Don't worry - it won't ruin anything! I've done this before... Close the [-] next to
IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers and expand the [+] next to
Disk Drives. Right-click on the hard drive on which your OS is installed - this would be the C: (80GB) - and select uninstall. Next you should restart your computer, and it will restart and once it has finished logging in, you should see the small "Found New Hardware" bubble in the bottom-right corner and it will "install" your hard drive again.
If this is not the case, just let me know and we can look at some other troubleshooting options for you.
Cheers