OK, Thanks for the great input! msconfig showed Conduit and I thought I had eliminated that horrible Adware program. Actually I had and only a few passive remnants were remaining. The culprit was Winguard Pro which I had installed and not actually used. I thought that it might be a reasonable alternative to True Crypt but apparently I was my own worst enemy. But I’m open to other alternatives.
As of now Winguard Pro has been removed and WinGrard Pro, Conduit and Lightscribe are all disabled in the startup programs.
Again thanks so much for your help!
UAC is now at the highest level, the login password is enabled and I need/want to apply encryption to one sensitive folder. The purchased version of Malwarebytes remains active and on guard as well as MS Security Essentials.