Computer situation : the update

Cousin Pat was able to salvage one of our computers, and it is the one I am using to type this.

The sound card isn't working, but that's an annoyance I'm quite willing to tolerate at this juncture. Other than that, it's working OK.

The crashed Dell computer, I'm not so sure I have time to deal with that right now.

Dad, and Pat, are hypothesizing that something sneaked on to one of the file-backup CDs I made with the old computer before it went under, and thus got on to the Dell when I reloaded some backups. (I was setting that up for other uses beyond writing Python code, although the latter was of course my *major* objective)

This one, I'm being paranoid about. Shoot, even Mom recognizes that:

(A couple hours after we get home from Cousin Pat's):
Dad: Have you done anything with the computer yet?
Me: Not yet
Mom: What, are you afraid to touch it?