Computer problems ... need help

When I boot my PC laptop up, it goes along normally and then I get an error message that says explorer.exe has a problem, it at first says cancel, then says OK. If I click it either way, it takes me to a blue screen of nothing
I can get on task manager, and I can things to launch that way, but not IE. I tried reinstalling IE, but that didn't seem to do any good.
I think what I did is that I downloaded a virus, when I downloaded Beowulf off bit torrent and it has mucked things up.
A coworker compared it to complaining about getting your wallet stolen while you were at the strip club doing cocaine.
Any advice?

 

Harsh but true. Karma's a bitch sometimes.

 

"explorer.exe" does not refer to Internet Explorer. It refers to the Windows' shell (desktop, file browser, taskbar, ect). While this is not detrimental to your computer, not having it start will force you to manually start everything. I would suggest you do a System Restore to before you attempted to download the movie. If that does not work, then it is quite possible you have to reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows. Make sure you transfer all important files to another hard drive first.

 

Yup. This is true. You really need to just reinstall Windows.

However, the real issue could end up being something worse. You could have a bad sector on the hard drive. So, after reinstalling Windows, you will want to run scan disk as well as defrag (if you haven't done that in a while, not good).