Omar,

  Well, you and several others that suggested viruses (virii?) and how to remove them.  I finally took the dang box into town for a successful $100 scrub.  Worth it?  I dunno.  Everything works now.
  The small shop claimed there were, indeed, several problems, and the registry was infected.  Also mentioned that the ARO software I'd tried (and paid $30 for) was pretty much worse than worthless and they removed.  He mentioned one of the hard drives (I"ve replaced the original 100 gig RAID hard drives with two new 250 Gb RAID hard drives) had a flaw and to watch it.  Could be.

  Sincere thanks to all who thought about this and offered suggestions.  I've learned a lot, including that Norton apparently doesn't catch everything.  Maybe nothing does.  

Take care, Stetts