Uderscor3, thanks for sticking with this. It may not be fixed yet but your assistance is reassuring. Say, how do you like your Cubase and the world of DAW? I've just got familiar with it and now getting started.
To answer your question: It was just one of my few remaining guesses. I scanned with a new virus cleaner to be double sure. It found a "corrupted Apple Safari add-on and ditched it; otherwise NO issues. What could be left? Enhanced IE 9 hijacked settings or somehow some kind of supporting software got ditched or damaged. So strange that PC works fine other wise, IE, too, except now it always produces sawtooth on my little CPU graph. Goes away as soon as I close IE, but when running IE I notice no issues at all (except websites say I have a proxy, which I don't have one set, and it says I don't have ActiveX, which I believe I do).
Still -- no other browsers work, no Skype, no ASUS direct downloads, no virus updates to my scanner. YET I got Microsoft updates this morning. Still get news feeds through Live Mail but no mail in or out. Can send/receive through Hotmail on IE, see who's on Messenger but can sign in to messenger. So, all same as yesterday.
A few things work, yet most don't.