So, at my wits end I tried re-installing the operating system on my computer tonight, but the drive would not acknowledge the existence of the disc. Frustrated, I ran another PC Recovery...

And miraculously, it worked. o3o

For some reason, this time it recovered a lot more that the last one didn't (I suddenly had a bunch of pictures and documents that hadn't come back last time). So I decided to give a shot at downloading Windows Messenger again, and it didn't give me any errors or redirect me to some random page!

So now I have everything working properly on here as it should be, which makes me very happy. ^^

The only issue I still have is the continued inability to open either the main hard drive icon or the external one with a double click. I still have to right click and go to explore. Not sure what's still up with that.