Technoman,
I owe you (and Microsoft) a debt of gratitude. I followed your suggestion and downloaded that Microsoft Antisypware Beta program and it seems to have fixed everything. Next I ran AdAware SE and Spybot just for giggles, and now I can run Internet Explorer again.
Prior to all of this I started using the Firefox browser as suggested by virus_killer. I like it better that IE, so I thinks I'll keep using that.
Mr.mixx,
Thanks for your suggestions as well, I was wondering how to disable that problem reporting to Microsoft!!
AOL Instant messaging works again as well.
Life is good again!!