Problems, unknown cause

Hello, I first want to say thank you for reading. I see a lot of people posting their suspected virus/adware in the subject, but I simply don't know enough about viruses to suggest what it is. I'd like to first note before I explain the symptoms that I did read the RUN AND READ ME thread, and attempted to complete as many of the steps that I could. Here's a list of steps which I could not complete:

- Could not run Combofix: Firstly, the unknown publisher window popped up once, I clicked run, and then it popped up again. Pressing cancel on the second tells me "C:\" folder is not accessible. Pressing run on both has an error message that windows can't open the type of files called 'nircmd.cfxxe'. After a few seconds, that goes away, and the disclaimer I was told would pop up does pop up, but when I click yes, nothing happens. I've tried running in safe mode, the same thing happens.
-Could not run RootRepeal, its error message is: Decompression error (5)!
-MG tools was able to run, but throughout the whole thing, it kept giving me errors saying 'Could not create output file (C:/MGlogs.zip)'. When the HJT part came up, I clicked 'I accept', and it came up with a widow: 'For some reason your system denied write access to the host file. If any hijacked domains are in this file, HJT may NOT be able to fix this. If this happens...(etc).' When all that was done, it turns out to not have made the zip, so I ran it a second time, and this time right clicked select all and copied it into a word file. Guess that'll have to do for now.
-I would also like to note (by way of proof, though it may be meaningless) that I could not run SuperAntiSpyware until after I changed the name to something inconspicuous. I tried this method on the above programs as well, but it didn't work for them.

Now that I've got the explanations of why some logs aren't attached, let me tell you my symptoms: I downloaded a file on Pirate Bay. Stupid, yeah, and I've seriously learned my lesson. After downloading, my computer made a beep and some weird low crackly/staticy type sounds. When I logged onto my yahoo messenger, I found all of my friends had received messages and emails. I got a new antivirus called Avira (my TrendMicro had expired months ago), and scanned to no avail, so I simply changed my passwords for my accounts-including my windows accounts- and was carefree for a few months with no problems until yesterday.
Yesterday I noticed that whenever I clicked on a button which was supposed to open a new window in Firefox, nothing happens (though I can right click and open a new tab, but clicking open a new window still won't work), and if I do that, then shortly after, when I go to one of my tool buttons (File, Edit, View) and click on them, I get a barely visible outline of a dropdown menu with no words in it at all, and the only way to close firefox is to then go to task manager and end the firefox.exe process. Clicking on the 'popout' button on youtube freezes the entire window altogether. The fact that nothing seems to be able to detect whatever's causing this fiasco is what mostly concerns me.

 

Yes, my UAC was and continues to be turned off (I know the instructions say to turn the UAC back on after all the scans are completed, but I didn't see the harm in leaving it off.)

When I try to run TDSSKiller, it first comes up with a box titled warning with the message: 'Can't initialize log'. When I press ok, there is then another box with the heading Error, and the message 'Can't load driver'. I tried changing the name of the file to Banana.exe, and I still received the same error.

 

When I try to run system restore, there's this error message:
There was an unexpected error: Class not registered (0x80040154) please close System Restore and try again.

The txt files are there however, so I'll attach them! (Ugh, every time I want to attach files, I have to go to IE, as manage attachments does not respond in firefox).

 

Here you are sir, I exceeded the limit, so I'll have to make it two posts

 

Oh, I see what the problem was now, the files named

sysinfo.txt, as well as winfiles.txt exceed the maximum file size for this forum, so it won't allow me to attach them.
Sysinfo is 1.25 MB, and winfiles is 530KB.

 

I found my vista recovery disk we made. I hope that's the disk you mean, and that the recovery disk isn't one of a few that would come with a vista package. I didn't buy vista, I bought a new computer several years back and it came with vista already installed, so we were able to make a recovery disk though, so hopefully that's good enough. What would you like me to do with my disk? Also, is this going to wipe all/most of my installed programs? Should I back up everything first?

 

I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound pushy or like a know-it-all or anything, but are you absolutely sure it's not malware? It just seems a little suspicious that I couldn't install SuperAntiSpyware (tried several times) until I changed its name, and I couldn't even install the rootkit finders and such with or WITHOUT their original name. I can download and install everything else just fine- I downloaded a game and a browser today. I feel as if it implies some sort of intelligence or programming that bars me from being able to install these specific programs.