Disaster after Restart

One morning I started up my laptop (a Gateway 4530 running Windows Vista Business) to find that it was running at a snails pace. I immediately tried to open task manager, only to receive an error (which I think said that permission had been denied). I thought that my machine was probably infected, so I downloaded AVG Free Antivirus and Antispyware. I ran a scan and fix, which removed a few things and allowed me to open task manager again. I scheduled a daily scan using the software, but everything slowed down again a few days later. It is so bad now that I immediately open task manager at start up and end the explorer.exe task, and use task manager to run any programs that I need. However I would like to try and do something to fix the problem. I downloaded HijackThis yesterday and can post the log if it would provide additional help. Thanks in advance for any assistance that you all could provide.

Go to the Spyware / Malware / Virus Removal forum, read the info there and follow the posted directions. Once you receive a clean bill of health, come back here if you have any additional questions or concerns or it turns out not to be a malware problem.

Please be patient as that is a very busy area. If you do not receive a response in 3 days, post a message here: http://forums.whatthetech.com/What_Do_If_Y…ays_t78698.html