Well, here is what happened. While typing the above response, I received three alerts from CounterSpy implying a change in certain SHELL parameters. This occurred about the same time I happened to run a scan to check memory usage. ZoneAlarm was quiet.

CS reported Dark Omen and Acknowledge registry entries among others. Further investigation suggested that WinSock settings apparently were attempting to be changed.

I first manually backed up the registry, ran TrojanHunter 4.1 (nothing found), also ran Mwav.exe (nothing), then allowed CS to quarantine or remove the affected files and entries. My desktop flickered, then all was normal. I ran LSP fix and found no problems. Internet access is speedy and everything appears to be fine.

I believe a remote access trojan (RAT) was attempting to get established here. CounterSpy appears to have blocked it.

Earlier, I had visited some websites while doing research on a Windows SP2 problem and also had viewed some material suggested by the Off-Topic lounge.

By the way, I have no idea what the attachment is doing on my previous post. I uploaded nothing to my knowledge.