I posted earlier, but I've learned more about the problem since.

(windows xp sp3)

AVAST found alureon in kbdclass.sys and atapi.sys. I quarantined both files and restarted. keyboard and cdrom weren't working. I uninstalled them in device manager and updated the drivers. That fixed the cdrom but not the keyboard. Oddly, the keyboard hotkeys work (the row of special keys across the top for calculator, windows explorer, mail, browser) but the standard keys do not. I uninstalled and reinstalled SP3 to no avail. Any advice?

not sure if I should have reposted this but I thought the hotkeys working might be an important point left out in the first post. Sorry if I'm doing this wrong ;/