well I truly appreciate your help Micky and Tech too, but I think there is still a trojan on my system.
My avast will still not update and MBAM will still not update, although I am getting different error messages then I was before. Also I have double checked the host file, there are no entries in it at all. The only listing there is:
127.0.0.1 local host
I have used the host expert program previously, but I will give it a shot again.
My browser is still being redirected, for example when I clicked on a link in google it redirected me to a white pages listing for local house cleaners, which had nothing to do with what I clicked on.
I did notice another thing, when my wife was using her profile I logged her off of the cpu. The "logging off" grey box was on the system for several minutes, approximately 3 - 5, before it disappeared. I found this odd because usually it only takes a matter of seconds before it logs off the system.
Again I do not know what else to do, but I am open to any other suggestions that you or anyone using the forum may have. I really do not want to reformat my hard drive, but if we have given up here then I suppose I can start a thread in another forum and try it all over again there.
I appreciate your time, effort, and expertise.