To add to what Poppy said, make a note of the name(s) of whatever that site finds and do some research on it (they usually have lots of info there on what they find) as it may well be that you will have to do some editing in registry that they cant do for you.
If your wife didnt intentionally go to ww.mIRC.com and download mIRC, then she got a trojan somewhere. Ppl really need to be careful opening strange emails/downloading files/going to infected websites.
The connection help dialog you referred to that pops up, would only do so in some instances, if you are trying to connect to a server and cant..that suggests to me its set to autostart and trying to connect to a server by itself, which the real mIRC doesnt do by default. The real mIRC would also not do anything to muck up your OS loading.
In other words, i strongly advise you do as Poppy suggested. The site she referred you to is quite good and safe to use.
