IE, Firefox, iTunes6 will not open.

hello, and thank you to these forums for the help so far.
i have gone through the steps underlined by major attitude, and i have run the scans up to th HiJackThis step.

I am posting this from the gf's comp since mine will not open any browsers, msn, itunes, yet it will let me start up games (ev, cs, civ, etc).
both adaware and ms antispyware removed a ton of files.

only recent irregular activity on my comp was trying to fix a buddies ipod, which just started whirring, and chirping after a couple diagnostic runs and a reformat.

have you guys heard of anything similar happening?
the programs seem to initialize now, but it was not a fun problem to handle seeing as i could not open any browsers...
any clarification on what the hell, please.
dave