The reason your system was attacked by viruses (and supposedly hackers) was because a) Your Windows XP wasn't up to date You didn't have a good enough firewall (Windows Firewall doesn't exactly count as a sound choice) c) You didn't have a good enough virus scanner or all of these. Furthermore, you shouldn't use such an isolated incident as a basis when writing a help topic for others. It is also common knowledge (and painstakingly obvious) that System Restore should always be done via Safe Mode when Windows no longer boots properly in Normal Mode. In many cases Windows does not boot into Safe Mode when the power button is being held down. Did you make this thread as a reminder to yourself or as a serious help topic for others? If it was for the latter, you've failed. You also fail to take into account that you've posted on a message board where the regular members are computer-savvy enough to do a System Restore, or if required, a complete format and reinstallation. The smartest have already switched to Linux.