[PFR]

Any help would be greatly appreciated and rewarded with a free pizza.

I may as well be learning disabled when it comes to computers, so bear with me. Here's the deal:

• Google Chrome stopped working. I could start it up, but it wouldn't load any webpage; it would just stay on a blank white page.
• Safari continued working. Kind of. Whenever I clicked on a Google link, I got redirected to some random site (mostly advertisements).
• Computer crashed midway through a virus scan.
• I restarted. After the Windows XP loading screen, it went to a black screen with what looked like a gray underscore (solid, not flashing) in the top left corner. It wouldn't go past that screen. I tried to reboot a couple more times: no luck.

Any ideas? Time for me to dropkick the sucker out the window and buy a new one?

Edit
I just tried to start it up for the umpteenth time, and it literally got stuck on a really faded, hard-to-see version of the loading screen. I turned off, turned it on again, and selected the option that goes something along the lines of "Use most recent options," and everything worked—no black screen. Running virus/spyware scans now.

[Cheeseball81]

Hi and welcome Let us know how the scans come out and we will go from there.