ok i ran the cleaner. it seems like that it does pretty much the same thing that the Disk Cleaner does in Windows Accessories.
so anyways, do you think this was a virus? like i said everything seems to be back to normal except a little slow on start up. perhaps i got rid of this virus when i did all those first things you said to do(tdskiller, combofix, highjack this)?
and mayb the slow startup is being caused by something else?