nipplemonkey, scaned using the housecall. result showed no virus! but my problem still is intact. when i restarted, the norton antivirus icon appeared on the bottom icon bar. then a message came stating that window is unable to load the virus program and asked to restart. clicking either ok, cancel or closing window lead to 'disabling' of the norton antivirus (as indicated by appearance of X over the icon). this is really weird. i am sure there are computure gurus with some cool ideas to beat this problem i am facing. off point, why did you nickname yourself as nipplemonkey? ;)