It could happen to you...

Unfortunately, it happened to us. Our computer picked up an adware virus the other night, and it completely disabled our system. It plastered stuff on our desktop wallpaper, and removed our ability to access parts of our computer. Norton was worthless in this instance, and it couldn't even perform a system scan once the virus got in. Hubby found instructions for virus removal (for a while we could still get online), but it was pages and pages long, and the virus had disabled our drivers so we couldn't use our printer. It was an awful feeling. We ended up taking the laptop to a local guy who got it fixed up for us. Yesterday we bought an external harddrive so we have a backup of everything on both computers (the desktop died a couple months ago, but we were able to get all our old documents and files off of it). Today we're back to normal, with the exception of the new firewall we're using seems to be interfering with our connection. I'm sure we'll get it figured out in the next couple of days.