Slow transfer from Junk Mail to Inbox Folder in hotmail

This is related to the recent (hopefully successful) removal of malware, described in the Malware section under "Hotmail is compromised but cleanup shows nothing." TimW walked me through a lengthy removal and cleanup operation. A new problem which might be related is emerging, and he suggested I go here to ask for help.

It is happening when I access my hotmail account from either my Compaq Presario (with Windows as the os) or my MacBook (with the Mac OS X being Leapard). In both cases, I access hotmail via Firefox.

I have not added addresses to my address book for now, except for the booby-trap TimW recommended. So, when I get emails from people I know and trust, I have to move the emails from the junk folder to my inbox folder. Every time I do that, it takes longer. I recently timed it at 2 minutes, when I ended the wait by clicking on refresh. Sometimes when I click on refresh, I wind up being sent to the inbox while the emails I tried to move into the inbox remain in the junk mail folder. This only started happening during and after the attacks. Now, if I wait long enough, the transfer is timed out, but I can make the transfer of emails from the junk mail to the inbox by hitting refresh.

I suspect some damage to my email account happened. I think I might have moved the original infected email from the junk mail folder to the inbox, just to find out once and for all what the mysterious message was (curiosity killed the cat...). I think this somehow infected or damaged the "move" function between the junk mail folder and the inbox folder. I just noticed that a similar remarkable delay exists when I hit the "junk" button to report spam. I don`t remember if I did that when I realized the mysterious email was not a personal message from my friend but a spam email. Anyways, it is possible that the move function is also damaged between my inbox and the "junk" reporting button. None of the other folders seem to be affected by this dramatic slowdown if I move files from the junk box to a personal file.

Could this problem be related to my original battle with the virus/trojan/email from hell? Is it unrelated? And what can I do about it?

At this point, I am forced to make payments to old billing systems with my new credit card (I replaced the old credit card in case someone had obtained the information during the attack). I am nervous about making any more payments than absolutely necessary until this issue is cleared up.

Any help in solving this problem would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

pc