Bruce, thanks for your input. I downloaded the Process Monitor from Sysinternals but am not sure what I should be looking for, maybe you can give me an idea about that.
I also downloaded and ran their Rootkit Revealer and it flagged a couple of embedded nulls (whatever that is) in the registry. I then downloaded the RegDelNull tool to remove them but am not clear on how to use it, here are the instructions, perhaps someone can tell me how to apply them: