I am not sure - I have not had time to read this entire thread. Just wanted to answer your specific question.

You should have a partition on your hard drive with your OS on it. Also, somewhere in your documentation/owners manual I imagine there are instructions for making your own copy of Windows.

You may indeed have to haggle with Best Buy or Microsoft (both unenviable tasks) and if and when you do reinstall windows, you WILL LOSE all important data on your machine.
Worst case scenario, though, would be to just back up on DVD ALL of the stuff you want to save (don't worry about backing up any malware along with it at this point) and then go back to where you bought your machine and raise a ruckus until they reinstall your OS for free. Then, put your important data back on compy.


-- Because I have not had time to read back over everything, not sure if Judy had you try sfc and then download and reinstall IE6?

Best luck
PP