I am still in the process of rebuilding everything.
Whatever happened blocked me from being an administrator, making any msconfig changes, accessing System in Control Panel, turned off Restore and Microsoft Anti-Spyware and AVG and deleted all of my restore points as well as corrupted any attempt at restoring existing internet access... I finally managed to reinstalled XP and am working on reinstalling everything else... this totally qualifies as sucks.
On a happier note, 6 and a half hours later I am saying hi to you guys
