To the geniuses at GeekPolice -- Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! What would I do without you to rescue me from that horrible, insidious fiend, Personal Antivirus. I followed the steps exactly as you outlined them above, and voila! No more PAV ... now I only hope I can keep from "clicking" too quickly on things that appear to be security software issues and not fall victim again!!
Just so you know, PAV first appeared while I was reading some news stories off either AIM or Yahoo News. I went to an accompanying set of pictures and was clicking through the pictures when the 1st PAV box appeared warning me of numerous viruses in oodles of my files! I guess I panicked, and because I saw a gold "shield" which is very similar in appearance to the shield logo of my very own Microsoft OneCare security software, I clicked on the box without reading and evaluating everything there thoroughly. Still, I think I would inevitably have been fooled by the similar-looking logo! I then got suspicious and stopped what I was doing before giving any c.c. info or actually downloading anything (so I thought), and I did a OneCare complete scan -- not once but TWICE.... but still the little PAV bar was at the bottom of the screen, and then there were annoying pop-up warnings every 10 minutes. I had to do something, but I didn't know what. Finally, it occurred to me... Google it, dummy! When I Googled PAV, I found a lot of possible helps, but then I saw "GeekPolice.net" and remembered reading about you guys one time. I'm so glad I found you when I did! I'm a happy, happy person right now! Thank you so much again!
~ no longer desperate!