Update: After an epic battle between myself and some nasty malware. The malware won, lol.
Had to use a last resort desperation move and restore the OS to original factory from a recovery partition. Then hours and hours of windows patches, updating software ... You guys know the drill.

Lost some data, but oh well ... sighs. Better than being on a botnet, or having this comp used as a kiddie porn server or summin ... more sighs.
Lost the battle, but appears the war is over. Comp is running like greased lightning again. Reminds me of why nobody should use crap software ... Like anything micro$oft makes, EVER, lol. Will be installing dual boot and a linux distro on this box in the near future. To ensure crap like this never happens again. With M$, it's not a question of if you'll have serious problems, just a matter of when.
live long and prosper folks. If the gods deem ye worthy.
