Is this just a recent development (as in, it used to work, but now it doesn’t)?
Do you have Administrative rights on your machine? An easy way to check is to right-click on the Start button. If you see the options “Open All Users” and “Expore All Users”, you have Admin rights; if not, you don’t.
What version of XP are you running (Home, Pro, Media Center)?
If you have admin rights, then I’d say it’s a lingering effect of the Malware. Probably a bad registry setting that got flipped. Harmless by itself, but annoying. Google might be able to tell you the registry setting, and if you’re comfortable using RegEdit…