Yes one of the favorite ways for folks to infect you is to pretend to be a "free" utility eg antivirus, or a speed your computer app etc which from the sound of your malware it may have been from such a beastie - you can get pop ups etc on "good" sites that will have this kind of malware in ads as your techy seems to have said so be wary what you click on, though you can also get infected by scripts.
You can remove TL completely and it won't affect your already listed stuff but you will lose your saved items and data on your PC, eg when you do a fresh install you won't have any items there and any you haven't put on eBay yet will be gone. Is there an option to save your backups or restore? There may be. Might be worth a try with a freshly downloaded copy after removing combofix.
If I had been your techy I would have uninstalled combofix after "cleaning" the computer - perhaps this may be an idea as its a removal, not prevention tool. You can do this however in your "add or remove programs" from control panel. I regret I have no experience with this particular utility so I can't tell if there is a problem as such with your TL install or if this app is "immunising" it or putting some kind of checksum tag on it etc. Probably best to play it safe and nuke and reinstall TL though.
As to the "slowness" well that's perhaps just TL its a pig of a program which is why I rarely use it, though if you experience overall slowness in windows it may be time for a full reinstall which you unfortunately do need to do from time to time with windows, and will make your techy happy.
I'm one of those that will always do a clean reinstall of windows on getting any amount of malware/virii anyway just to be on the safe side - I found that when previously working as a tech it was just the best solution and saved time in the long term, despite the occasional bitching of customers about it 😉 But this may not be necessary at this time.
I'd be recommending you invest in something like Bullguard (virus and firewall) as you may not be sufficiently protected. Also I'd recommend using WOT (web of trust) - this is free, although if you have a slow connection it may slow things down a little. Always keep your windows fully updated also and don't use cracked software. Doing these things won't make you immune but it will help. Education is the best defense.
If you think you are still infected you could also try Panda online scan. (and it wouldn't hurt to do this anyway from time to time).
I'm driveling on here a bit, my morning caffeine hasn't taken effect yet... um. Hopefully that may have given more info.
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