Those items were chai.dll, fennel.dll, mate.dll (that's "matay", is in the high energy south american tea, not "mate", as in the Aussie greeting, "G'day, Mate!"; whoever came up with these things probably lives in the Western U.S., loves Indian food and herbal teas with a kick to them). The final .dll was an itapi(?).dll (can't find my notes or the log entry), which evidently interferes with internet connection settings. I had lost connectivity, and after several phone calls to my ISP, no luck. I duplicated a lan setting, with mediocre results, but restored connectivity. My family fast ethernet PPOE had been disabled twice and could not update zycel modem. Another call from my ISP and they were finally able to restore my settings. Now, at least, I know what had caused the original interference.
I was desperate to find some way to remove malware, so I went to the online free scanner, Trend Microsystems House Call 6.5 (not the beta 6.6), which I accessed through BC. Found ADWARE_180 SOLUTIONS, ADWARE_MEMWATCHER. (Will try to find out more on these.) Removed them, rescanned, nothing found. Unfortunately, it also set off an earlier version of Spybot on my PC, which is steadily learning processes, as it set off the teatimer again, which I have not been able to turn off yet.
One benefit to this: a very interesting log of what the spybot is finding installed on my pc: there is some malware there I had foolishly installed thinking it to be valid protection, but it has also found malware that was masquerading as Windows and other components. Should be helpful for an HJT.
Interfered with my first attempt at Cobian 8 backup, will try that again tonight. Will simply look for a good system snapshot or restore point, for now, as my system restore points are ignored or changed, and now have a better point for the spybot system snapshot.
Hopefully someone will be able to benefit from these mistakes. Certainly a learning experience, albeit a farcical one.
Edited by fuzzywuzzy6, 02 March 2009 - 11:14 AM.