Re: Once a Techy...
If you really want to know what happened, it was a problem that snowballed into a bigger problem...
started with some very nasty malware which disabled all antivirus/spyware removal/firewall software on my computer, and hijacked my browser.
Upon fixing some of the problems manually and then running a new set of tools, the hard-drive got corrupted... I suspect it was some file handles that remained open/idle since I was running so many repair tools simultaneously.
As a result the system wouldn't even boot up and as is the case with most vendors these days, I wasn't supplied with a recovery/boot CD/DVD. However, after some research, I got a new recovery DVD made and used the recovery console to fix startup problems.
I'm finally in now, and running spyware removal tools and hijackthis again to see if everything is okay.