Thanks Catilley! I bought this notebook with Vista 64 bit and upgraded to 7. The upgrade came free through HP. I don't have any backup discs, and I'm not sure how to boot to the recovery partition. I tried F11 at boot up when prompted, but that functionality is gone also. I'm kicking myself for not making back up discs. There were no discs that came with the system, so I only have the upgrade discs from HP, and I'm not sure those will do me any good. If I have the activation codes for my OS, would Microsoft send me a new copy of WIndows 7? I've lost sound, cannot recover or system restore, my connection icon in the lower right hand tray says I'm not connected even though I am, I've lost link functionality in control panel (cannot open Program Uninstaller), I cannot open my Windows Live Mail, Windows keeps telling me that it doesn't detect any AntiVirus software running on the system, and on and on. I have Webroot Internet Security Essentials, and the Windows Cleaner no longer works, which makes me nervous that there are other aspects of the program that aren't working properly and I just don't know it. I have installed Adware Professional 2010, RegCure, Cyberdefender, and Advanced System Care. I've done multiple scans with all of these and they have turned up Malware (all finding different ones). I've gotten to the point now where none are finding anything, so my PC seems to be clean now, and RegCure only found one error on the last scan. Even with all of this followed by a reboot, the problems still exist.
As for the backup discs, I've certainly learned my lesson...
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again for the reply!