Antivirus websites re-directed & desktop/icons forever to load

Hey guys – so I have a huge issue, not too sure what virus I’ve run into. I’ll start from the beginning.

Yesterday as I was closing down my computer I noticed a Java icon on my taskbar, and I wasn’t running any java apps that I know of. I closed it down, and firefox froze on me. I finally decided to CTL+ALT+DEL firefox but I think the damage was done. I immediately ran a malwarebytes scan and it found 5 things, all Trojan/virus related (from what I remember they were avsoft/avsuite related because I remember thinking that they looked like Avast). I deleted them and rebooted. Upon reboot, my computer took forever from the login in screen to get to the desktop/icons. I read some info on running “explorer.exe” but it was already running. I shut it down and tried to run “explorer.exe” in the RUN option in the task manager. When it came up, the desktop and icons appeared, however they looked like an old OS. I have Windows XP, but it looked like windows 98 or something (gray task bar and task manager, hopefully that makes sense).

I have malwarebytes, avast, mcafee, so I ran scans with those and they didn’t find anything. I could not connect to the internet, so I started up in safe mode and tried a scan then. Came up with nothing. Finally, I did a system restore to yesterday before I got infected and when I restarted it took forever to load again BUT it was back to the XP look (blue task bar/manager) thankfully. I was able to connect to firefox BUT when I go to antivirus sites I get redirected to bad sites according to WOT (I thought having WOT, and a bunch of spyware/antivirus software would save me from this, guess not).

I’ve run full scans on malwarebytes and avast, along with using my PC to download spybot to a USB stick to transfer over to my laptop and install. Spybot found some spyware but nothing major. I am still getting re-directed (to random BAD sites) when trying to go to anti-virus sites and I don’t want to restart in case 1. it reverts back to the 98 view or 2. takes forever to load my desktop icons (just a blank view of the desktop photo). In addition I ran malwarebytes again (full scan), and it comes up clean (up to date version of the program of today also).

So, I previously had a virus (6-12 months ago) and got amazing help through these forums using combofix. I also took every measure possible not to get one again with WOT, and these spyware/malware/antivirus programs. I dunno how I got another one! But my dumbass did, damnit!! Anyways, I have downloaded combofix again and I am ready to use it if necessary. Sorry to ramble on, just hoping to give the best picture of the situation. I THANK YOU SOOO MUCH FOR THE HELP IN ADVANCE! YOU GUYS ROCK!

Thanks! :-o