Sorry for the double post but I need to post an update.

First, got rid of nod32 and installed avast free.
Pc keeps freezing; 5 times now, forcing me to hard reset.
Winrar is acting funny; double clicking an archive runs winrar.exe but can’t see the UI. if I double click again I get another winrar.exe; I saw as much as 10 in first attempt to open archive. riht click-extract here extracts the archive but still can’t see the UI.
avast is set to scan documents when opening and writing. autosandbox is on but set to ask and didn’t ask anything yet.

Also I get a window (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\AutorunsDisabled) with a shortcut to adobegammaloader.exe inside at startup; its just annoying.
Any help?