I'm not sure if I have a virus, because my mother changed my laptop from English to Chinese. I can't change it back because she changed my windows 7 to windows xp. Since I don't understand anything, I'm not sure how to check the computer for viruses. I usually leave the computer on sleep, but I accidentally turned if off this morning, and when I got back and logged on, random music starts playing. I don't own the music and I've only ever heard it once. I remember my friend came over once and started playing some of her music on my laptop, but that was a while ago. There are no windows open and I haven't downloaded anything for a while now. I restarted the computer and checked, but this time, it deleted a bunch of files off the computer. I'm planning on transferring my data/files to a USB drive and then taking the computer for someone to look at. Is this a good idea?

Sounds like a perfect recipe for a format and reinstall of Windows 7. Save anu ser files first then use your Win7 DVD or recovery partition to redo the laptop.

I fully agree with NeedKarma. Save everything you need from the computer and reformat to the original programming.

If you have the windows disc you can try to repair windows, which will probably fix the Chinese thing, but if you really do have a virus it probably won't fix that, but at least you'll be back to english. Formatting may be your only option, but I really hate doing that unless it's truly the only option.

The language issue is a minor problem, assuming you can read Chinese to know where to click. ** sorry I live that world every day, since my operating system is Chinese and we use a patch to the system to make 90 percent in English.

But not sure how she changed it from Windows 7 to XP

But yes, a professional can wipe it and reinstall

Oh I must have missed the part about changing from Windows 7 to XP. That's pretty far out there. I'm not sure how anyone could accidentally change from 7 to XP. Did she maybe just change the theme to look like XP?

http://www.wikihow.com/Change-the-Language-of-Your-Computer-%28Windows-XP%29 after resetting your language download a free anti virus online and scan your computer this could take hours depending on your system remmeber to do a full scan of your computer if the antivirus came up empty go to your task bar right click and select task manager select procees at the top of task manger and see if any software is running at the background if you find the software that is running click on it and click end task/prosses if there is noting there then follow this link you method 2 http://www.pcworld.com/article/241049/how_to_disable_windows_startup_programs.html you may need to search for run then type msconfig because you are running winxp

On the bottom of your laptop there should be a "windows" sticker showing which product the laptop came with. If it came with XP then maybe she tried to restore it from OEM portion of the hard drive. If that is still there you can reinstall your system from there. If it came with win7 then there is no way to accidentally change it. If you bought a win7 install disk then just reintall win7 and it will keep your files under windows "old".