Wonky Programs and Crashing Computers = wasted weekend!

Friday morning I woke up to a computer that wouldn't work. It looked suspiciously like a virus had eaten my hard drive. I turned the computer off (it wouldn't boot) and went to work. When I got home, I did a reinstall, being careful to leave the files INTACT so that I could salvage stuff--I was able to do virus scans and found nothing but a spyware program on my son's profile. Fine, I deleted, then did a deep scan--I was tired and it was taking a long time so I went to bed. I got up this morning to even worse problems. I got my computer up and running just enough to copy my saved custom content to a portable drive, but it was unstable so I had to format both drives and reinstall the OS. Three times I did this today. NOT FUN. And no matter how enticing IE7 is, don't do it unless you are sure you want it. I thought, sure go ahead and get the latest! That is what prompted install #3, I had to scrub that horrid program off this drive. Well, all clean, Sims reinstalled and now to put my precious Custom content back in. I actually think that one of the programs I downloaded (to take better screenies) the other night crashed my system. I'm not sure, though. No pics as everything is on the portable drive and I'm simply knackered. It's 320 am here. Off to bed and deal with the rest tomorrow.