Can you recall the time the behaviour commenced and what you were/had been doing (downloading, playing a game, installing an application or a driver update, some 'shareware' perhaps)??

 sometimes when I restart my computer it starts to find new hardware, hardware thats already installed

that can occur if your system jumped back to the previous "control set" (tries to save itself), the registry got corrupted, the hal was changed, all the things that xp can do to try and recover when something goes wrong.  it might also indicate that the hard drive is having trouble. mabey even if your bios was reset or changed.

but

coupled with the other problem, sounds like either something truely funkey from some bad stuff, or many parts of the registry got corrupted.

so I never even opened it, I ust got rid, it was called win32/parite, could it of left something behind.

oh duh i eventually will read , no if you dont execute the virus , then you probably never got it. and if you had gotten that one, it would shred executables and screensaver executables. and you would have probably wanted to format and be done with it.

its more likely you got another :-)   naw.

which tweaks have you been doing, and what is your file system (ntfs fat32)  do you dual boot?  how old is your hard drive, and check your bios and see if it has reset, is your time showing correctally?

are other registry stored items ruined also? like various settings, personal settings, uhh screen res, did the video drivers fail?  are other things where you put them?