OK. I first disconnected the internet and then stopped all the AV/Spyware, etc programs and tried to change the start page...no luck.
I then disconnected from the internet, booted into safe mode and looked up the registry...NOW, the start page key was there, I changed it to something besides MSN.com and it seems to work when I opened IE. I then ran all the spyware/AV checks and came up with nothing.
Just reconnected to the internet in regular mode and everything works fine, the IE page was changed to what I want, but now I cant change it again...it must be some program I have running but cant figure it out.
Maybe I try shutting down one program at a time to see...but I think it is WinPatrol because that is the program that keeps giving me warnings when I change the registry keys. Now, when I try to change the start page key, it wont let me change it, says "error writring values new contents"
Interesting...