I used the flash drive to boot up. The MBR was fixed and no problems with booting now. Just wanted to put it out there just in case someone else runs into this thing. BTW ... ran the GUI chkdsk and Advanced Systen Care to make sure. No other problems came up.

Uvah, your computer is certainly entertaining. updates made with no problems here.

I also had no problems with the updates Uvah. 

You may feel that it's not your computer but something is not right with all the problems you have been having.  It may not be a virus or malware just might be a piece of software that just doesn't not want to play well with the rest.  If you can't zero in on what it is you probably should consider wiping the HD and doing a clean reintall of the OS.  If you have made backups it will more than likely have the same problem.

Just a suggestion.

@Philly0381 ... I've been thinking the same thing. I never used to have any problems before. Only within the last few weeks. Perhaps if I took it back to a restore point say a month ago that will solve it. If not what I can do is delete the backups I have now, uninstall the programs added since then, do a new backup and then wipe the drive and do a clean install. If I do that I'll no longer have Home Premium, it'll be like an upgrade to the Pro version. Which is not a bad thing. Then I'll have to do SP1 again. Tons of fun. Not.

Too too much.

I did a little house cleaning. All the programs I installed over the last month or so I got rid of. Unfortunately that included two apps from giveawayoftheday. The Paragon backup and restore home and advanced editions. They were redundant anyway. Also got rid of all the add-ons for FF save one, the speed dial. So now we shall see. Good thing is all I've done will be reflected during the incremental backup through Western Digital's SmartWare. Now all I got to do is delete the backup I made with Paragon's software.

Uvah, switch over to Windows 95 then you won't have to worry about updates. If an update does find you then just work from Dos.

 @DaveBax ..... When you switch over to Windows for Workgroups. This way 'nothing' will 'find' you. And if it does so what. j/k

@Philly0381 ... Unloaded a few more programs. Ran CCleaner, Glary Utilities and ASC. There were 54.something mb in temp files split between three browsers (?) Firefox had the least while Opera had the most and I used it like three times. IE8 had quite a bit and I never use it. Go figure. I did manage to speed things up a bit though. Here's something else I was considering. Is it possible, because I use WD's SmartWare backup Utility, that it was conflicting with Paragon's? Haven't had any more issues with it not booting. Just that one time. Have some more cleaning up to do on my external HD, getting rid of a possibly corrupt backup, the one I had Paragon do, then let SmartWare do its thing with the incremental backup. Should take no more than a day or two. Fortunately all my changes will be reflected in that so there's no problem with that backup. Good looking out you guys.