Musikman,

Instead of doing a wipe/reload ... run your win install disk, and choose "REPAIR" .. if you were hooked with my issue (they chase me around the web .. I think) ,... this will put Windows back into it's own shell  ... run this way for some time, and update and run your security utilities before you restart.  

If you have any shreds of the PE_ issue on your machine, it is that much faster to hook it with more.

Some good tools:
Sysinternals  .. a suite of 'what is under the hood' of Windows and it lets you monitor stuff. 

HijackThis, RUBotted,  and Rootkit Buster all from Trend have been very helpful for me.
Search for 'Tools' on the home page