These scam programs use vulnerabilities in old versions of software to install: scan for out-of-date and insecure software using Secunia Software Inspector and update any vulnerable software: this will help to prevent future infections.
I think it’s gone now. got a big clue from running SmitFraudFix per the above. it didn’t fix it though. the clue was running all this cleaning software in SAFE MODE. Like I said, I’m a novice. After starting in SM, I looked at what processes were running-almost nothing. I tried MalwareBytes abam a few times but it was stuck, so I ran it in SM and it worked great. Found a bunch of stuff it didn’t see on regular startup and was able to delete. BTW SmitFraudFix found literally dozens of files with suspicious names to delete. good riddance. it also tore off my wallpaper which was an easy fix.
Now that my Net is back, I will download all the updates to these cleaning programs and run again in SM
After running the latest updates for SpyBot, MalwareBytes, Avast Cleaner, SmitFraudFix, SUPERAntiSpyware and Ad-Aware (this took literally hours and hours), a huge amount of clutter got removed (including all cookies) and the original Rogue AntiSpyware is nowhere to be seen.
It was worth it. Whatever else got removed, the performance is much crisper now than i can remember.