Thanks Torch,
Give me a spell to go over there at sysnative.
I began this "adventure" while searching for tooling to repair an old Ford pickup - not an old Windows 7!
So anyways, I posted in the general forum about what had happened from the start - set the post as "solved" when I cleared the task manager - which I thought at the time was the only problem.
Having gone thru some of the discussion here in "software", I decided to open up the original post "unresolved" with the new findings that are strongly pointing to a malware/Trojan type virus that has likely found it's way into my Win7 computer.
******* view at my post "IEexplore.exe hang" in the GENERAL discussion **********
Even if there is a Trojan virus found, the anti-virus programs do not fix the damage the malware causes - to the best of my knowledge anyways. The best solution may simply be to format the gangrene out this rig, and rewrite a new Win7 with a retail key and disk purchase, turn off updates, and to just repeat a format/clean reinstall at the first sign of any future infestation - like we used to do with old DOS when the Kalok hard drive seized - which are still backed up to this day !
I guess I have nothing to lose in downloading and running the anti-virus steps spelled out at malwaretips. At least it may inform what the issue is or has been.
- - - Updated - - -
I registered with sysnative, and followed their download steps in preperations to post in their update forum.
This is the SUR-Tool KB947821 that was offered for download :
There is one (1) 947821 executable standalone "SUR", and 25 other self-extracting cabinet applications.
Was I suppose to run all 25 cabinets, and then run the SUR tool ?
Well, Sysnative only mentioned about running the SUR. So I only did what was specified, and did not bother the other 25 cabinet applications.
After running the 947821 standalone, the CBS log continues to fail packages, but does not report the autochk.exe or display.dll.mui corruptions anymore. SUR may have repaired those two files - but - cannot fix the error failures to open or repair update packages.
I'm just guessing that the 25 cabinets need to be run and extracted prior, so that the SUR tool can open and/or identify them as packages ? ?? Maybe like the fuel and engine analogy you were hinting on...Yea...