What the heck happened?!?

[babylon5guy]

Hi,
I have posted before about Windows Explorer opening slowly: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?threadid=78276 which no one could help me with and no matter what I did changed that and I tell you I spent many hours on it and almost reinstalled windows to fix it. All of a sudden it is working normally. Two things changed, I had trouble with a strange virus that I posted about Getting emails I didn't send After going through 4 or 5 virus checkers I found one that found some virus I never heard of, and darn I forgot to write it down because I deleted it so fast when it was found, as the email thing was driving me nuts and by the way I have not gotten another one. Also ZoneAlarm Plus had an update which I did, only this time I had it erase all my permissions and a redid them as I was asked, on the other updates I told it to keep my settings. As I ok'd things to access the internet I noticed one of them was to let Windows Explorer have access, which I ok'd. Anyone have any idea whether it was the virus or ZoneAlarm whiched caused this problem? I NEVER want to go through that again!
TIA

[DragonNOA1]

My opinion.... the virus. Virus's are bad... windows explorer accessing the internet is not (most of the time). Virus trumps explorer in this case.

[babylon5guy]

I tend to lean with you DragonNOA1, however this slow explorer opening thing has been with me since shortly after I installed XP about 2 years ago. The email thing just started recently, and has not happened since I got rid of the virus. That is the only thing that throws doubt into the equation. I also did that XP update thing, but I doubt that had anything to do with it.