DukeNukemForever: Good to hear you solved your problem and it ended in a happy end ;-) Also thanks for the offer.
You still can improve your safety without spending much money. I would move from Avira Antivir to Microsoft Security Essentials or Avast. When in my clique a computer was infected most time Avira was used and few weeks ago
an update paralyzed windows, that's why I would not recommend it. With Avasts update to version 7 I had some problems running some of my freeware tools (Avast was very restrictive), but maybe they fixed it and you want to try it.If you use Firefox you maybe want to install some helpful add-ons like NoScript, WOT and Adblock. Noscript disabled all scripts, only from you allowed pages can run scripts like javascript, flash, etc. WOT warns you if you went to an unsafe page (based on community votings) and adblock blocks advertisement. Also keep all your software ( especially Windows, Browser, Virus-Scanner, Java, PDF-Reader, Flash) up to date.
I've thought about getting rid of Antivir anyway, the ads in the free version have gotten even more intrusive and annoying since the last version update than they already were before, and the rate of false alerts vs. real ones was probably about 50/50 or worse. I didn't get the impression it did a lot to save me from actual attacks.
I've got Avast on my netbook and so far it seems okay, but I also noticed that it complains about some of my freeware or indie games and tries to prevent me from running them. Maybe I should try Microsoft Security Essentials; a friend of mine seems quite happy with it.
I've also got Adblock, but I didn't know about the other two add-ons, thanks!