happy to report that it has been almost 2 days since my system has been bothered and hjt shows nothing unusual. by jove, we may have just gotten rid of it (knocking furiously on wood). if not, i'll be back asking for more help.
here's a summary of the tools and steps i needed for seeming success:
hjt to see if it's there and what dll it's calling itself
cwshredder to get rid of the majority of the virus so you can tweak or dowload preventative tools
spybot s&d to scan for hidden trackers
adaware to scan for other hidden things
advance process manipulation to unload any dll files found by above tools
the killbox to be sure those files were uninstalled upon reboot
i also deleted temp files, objects, and history in the control panel/internet and did some tinkering with regedit following specific directives from experts, though i don't think i ever found anything in there to remove after running the above set of fixes.
stuff that didn't work for me: beta-fix, hiving, spywareblaster. either i didn't have the versions that these could detect or i had versions that prevented these from running successfully.
i hope this is the last of it. thanks for all help, program ideas, guidance, and general patience!
