good morning mrreg. thanks for your help. i opened msconfig & scanned the list. the only suspicious thing i could recognize was "ACDAEMON" a program file in common files, only because sometimes a program called DAEMON takes a long time to close when i shut down. but then, within a few seconds, i got a notice "genuine host process for win32 services encountered a problem & has to shut down." i shut it down immediately. i'm not eager to go back, & anyway, i don't really know what might look strange.
david had asked me to give the addresses of some of the web pages that popped up unrequested. last night i went on the atkins website - about diet - and this one popped up: hxxp://www.shopica.com/search.php?q=Diet&txn=3480-8A818E92. (as requested i changed the t's into x's.) i checked this website at nortons website checker & it came up "safe."
so, another day has begun & i don't know what to expect, but i'll get back if anything does. meanwhile, i'd love to hear your or david's ideas.
thank you!