Okay, with the help of the denizens of The Elder Geek, I ran a program called HijackThis and got a list of my running processes, since my taskman wasn't responding.
In that list was a file called TESTING.EXE. Turns out that this is a spybot of the W32/SPYBOT-B genus.
It disabled my taskman, regedit, msconfig and other programs that might point to it or eliminate it.
I ran Spybot Search and Destroy and that found and eliminated the offending bot.
Now, I'm busy trying to find and change ALL my passwords and make a note of them so I don't go and forget the new one. (I would do that, I'm a dummy these days
)
Anyway, if you ever have those symptoms, check for a spybot.
Brian