I appreciate your feedback, but it doesn’t answer my question at all. I am familiar with what viruses do, I am familiar with the need to backup and run security utilities. As I mentioned in my question I CAN’T RUN ANYTHING! That is the problem. I know I need to run my anti-virus but I can’t, that is the problem.

I found away around this. When I get to the file or the icon, I am right clicking and selecting Run As…. This has been working but is definitely not a solution I am content with. I have been able to run my anti-virus. I had to manually delete a file that Kaspersky told me I could not delete by using the command prompt because it is not visible in the folder (and yes the folder shows other hidden files).

Does anyone know if there is a way for me to download an original “ctfmon.exe” that ISN’T infected with virus or corrupted?

It sounds like you have a nasty virus. As far as downloading an original .exe that does not contain a virus I dont know if this is possible, you can check this link to a MS Knowledge Base on cfmon.exe http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282599 I believe this gets installed with the Office products and it runs individually for each office product that is installed on the computer. I think you probably should be able to uninstall the Office suite and then reinstall it. If cftmon.exe is the culprit maybe uninstalling Office will make this exe unavailable for the virus to use, not sure if this will be the case or not, as you stated “I am familiar with what viruses do”, the virus might right to a different file if no office suite is available. I have never trusted any AV to completely remove a virus, if a machine is infected in our network there is no question it will be reformatted without exception prior to it connecting to our network again. Good luck and I hope this helps you out.

Uninstalling Microsoft Office Suite is not something I want to do, but will do if necessary. I am fairly certain that ctfmon.exe is the corrupted file that is being used to propagate other virus keys, programs, and files, but at the same time, I wonder if this can be true because I did previously delete the file using cmd, del C:\Documents and Settings\schmidtw\ctfmon.exe. I had to do it that way because it doesn’t appear in that directory (even Kaspersky said it didn’t exist their) but when I attempted del C:\Documents and Settings\schmidtw\ctfmon.exe a second time, cmd reported File Not Found indicated that it was in fact there and was in fact deleted. I want to know how to get to the bottom of this so that once I delete this problem, it doesn’t return.

Currently these are the tools I am using in conjunction to combat my problem:

Wise Registry Cleaner
CCleaner
Spybot Search and Destroy
Kaspersky Antivirus 7.x(?)

This was just crossing my mind as I was rereading the content:

At this point, I am getting pretty sick of the virus situation and am strongly considering reimaging. With this in mind, I want to back up my computer. I also do NOT want to connect my external drive and have the data on that corrupted. What are the best procedures for backing up and making sure data is not infected?

Before you re-image, try running “Detect and repair” from within MS Office (if you have not already done so).
If that has or does not work, I would back up your data (more on that later) and delete your profile on the system. My reasoning is that if you can perform a “run as” using alternate credentials, the OS itself may not be “broken”, but your profile/account may indeed be (hey, it’s worth a shot).
If this does not work, it’s time to re-image (and as discussed above, you probably want to skip right to this step because of the virus infection). First, boot from an external live CD source, such as a Knoppix CD, ERD Commander or the Ultimate Boot CD (either the Linux or Windows versions) and copy your data to a different location (CD-ROM – burning software is included with UBCD; network; flash drive; external drive). NOTE: if you data is infected, be sure to have some sort of A/V software running BEFORE the copy process starts.
Start your system from your install source, perform a full format (do not choose a quick format or to leave the existing file system intact) and reinstall. Rebuild your system, and prior to transferring you backed up data to your new system, make sure you have A/V and firewall software (and anti-spyware) software installed.

Thanks for the info. At this point, I’m pretty sure that the re-image is the best and safest solution. Thanks again.

I have kaspersky…which is pretty much the best anti-virus I have ever tested and or used.

I am more ingterested in knowing what changes were made to prevent me running a program. Why would double clicking a program pop up with “Open With…”. It simply does not make sense to me.

It could still possibly be the virus that is asking you to give the application some admin rights. When asked for “Run As”, this is implying the user you are signed into does not have rights to run exe’s, viruses can trap you by you submitting your admin userid and password, and then the virus has admin rights to your pc and all the access to system files. We have had a virus on our network before that manipulated Norton in a very similiar way, it was a keylogger. You might try uninstalling and reinstalling the offending application, but again I would image the machine. Hope this helps you out.