I forgot to post that I had had a problem with starting over in Safe Mode. I attempted to do it, but it stopped at a black screen and wouldnt go any further. I restarted the laptop in normal mode by turning the power off (I had waited for more than an hour) and installed the software previously mentioned.
In other news, the pop-ups have returned. But the software must have done something, because the severity in the number of pop-ups has gone down significantly.
Im also still having the problems w/ the mousepad and the quick links in the lower left hand corner.
Oh, and I did use hijack this to remove the entries you all said to remove. However they returned