Losing general control/access

Blatantly stating all this really has a "paranoid loon" sound to it, but I'll try. About five months ago I did a general cleanup with a few programs and installed MSE because a PC Cleaner Pro remnant I couldn't locate was preventing AVG from installing. I figured it was removed and left everything as it was but after awhile I realized MSE had NO detections or blocks and wasn't doing it's scheduled scans. I got rid of it and tried to install AVG only to find out the PCP file was still around.

I seached Program files manually and found "PCCleaners" then used that name to search in safe mode. What turned up was a folder containing the problem file (uninst.exe) and several remants, apps and logs from a few other programs, legit and otherwise. The file was only visible by searching PCCleaners specifically, even after I discovered it. I know logs of even normal updates would probably read very suspiciously but these are just...wow. One even contained a line like "Say hi to your impersonated security". Really makes no sense for it to be there regardless of the source but...the whole thing reads like a takeover of MSE with the real thing being cloned a file at a time, the old files being buried in endless file paths, then the paths being uninstalled. Is that possible?

Either way it was a mess as this back door had apparently been active for about a year, and personal files on my secondary user were being routed to a fax and printer that are unknown to me, net security was set to nothing, and users were elevated to admin with "my permission". I cleaned up as much as I could and at one point even logged on to find my old look and all my options restored. They'd been taken away so gradually I really hadn't noticed. But the next morning I found my security settings had again been set to "off", Command prompt (which I have 4 of?) would work for a minute and then respond to every command with "invalid", and somehow even the PCCleaners registry keys survived even though I deleted them and rebooted at least three times. As of yesterday I'm locked out of several (non-critical) files and counting, and almost all the settings I adjust are being undone. Start-up programs I disable re-activate and I even have to turn off Network Discovery and Folder Sharing 2 or 3 times a day because they keep coming on again! I downloaded Malwarebytes and a couple of updates to Program Files just today but by the time I downloaded HitmanPro I found myself denied download access to C:/ folder AND all subfolders! I am not liking some of the user settings I'm seeing in the Registry either but I know better than to start blindly changing them.

Sorry to be so long-winded but this is almost as confusing as it is irritating. I don't even see anything THAT bad as far as the programs I have now. I can't figure out what's causing this.

 

My computer randomly shut off twice while running HM but the third time it managed to finish.

The Babylon file is gone. I had to reset Firefox as both it and Chrome had become nearly unusable since I posted.

Cleano finished so fast it was hard to tell if it had run at all. Don't know if that's normal.

The registry edit was successful.


One change in the past week is that media and picture files now display the file type as an inherent part of the title. The secondary user account has always looked that way but never this one.

After I did the above steps I again found Network Discovery and Folder Sharing turned on. I switched them off and so far they haven't changed.
I was locked out of my own user files until I changed my account type from Administrator to the "Administrators" group.
Also, this laptop is now listed in it's own "Devices and Printers" section and I'm positive it never has been before. I can even browse OS files from there. :confused

 

Thank you very much for your help Kestrel