Laptop rant

My laptop is having some major problems right now.  The program shortcuts aren't working--all I get is "Choose the program you want to use to open this file"--and it seems to be the result of some virus.  Presumably the virus is gone now...I ran an anti-virus scan, a quick scan, and two system restores.  But those shortcuts still don't work (though the programs' .exe files do, oddly enough).  I searched around online, and I guess there are some downloads that can fix this, but I don't know.  I'll probably try that tomorrow (after another scan, in Safe Mode), but it looks pretty doubtful.

The whole thing is a rotten headache.  The worst of it is, I'm not sure if there is still a virus or not.  Hopefully the Safe Mode scan will find that out.  I can't do that until tomorrow afternoon, though, because it takes so long and I have to keep an eye on it. 

At five years old, my laptop isn't exactly on the cutting edge, and the simplest/long-term solution would be to get a new one.  Except that practically no one makes laptops with 16:10 screens anymore, and I can't stand its replacement, 16:9.  That ratio subtracts about an inch, vertically.  So for the time being, I've got to try to salvage my poor laptop. 

I don't want a new laptop, anyway--I really like the one I have.  It's been my first and only laptop, and it always survived problems before.  I'll be pretty depressed if we can't fix it.