Thanks for your advice FF. Here's the prognosis and a re-alert to all who have corresponded with me since that Bugbear "hoax" (which, it seems, turns out to be a real virus, W32/Magistr.b@MM in clever disguise).

I installed the McAfee this morning and have been poring over this all day, and here's the sad news: I'm infected : 15 files, mostly W32/Magistr.b@MM, but there's a couple W32/Magistr.dam3 (which I can't find on any virus library or alert site). Two files cleaned, one quarantined, but the others won't clean OR quarantine (the suggestion is to delete but I'm not sure what the files are so I don't want to just delete them, but I can't leave them there either, can I?)...when I click "quarantine' for the others all I get is "delete error". And there's one damn "Flyswat" file which came with the computer that I never installed or opened that's infected and it won't clean, quarantine, OR delete (I figured I could just get rid of it). So now what the hell do I do with that one?
Evidently, the Magistr hoax on the back of Bugbear a couple weeks ago was a cleverly disguised non-hoax, I guess. This virus is passed through e-mail on familiar addresses, so anyone who's been corresponding with me since that hoax, in either e-mail or IM, should get on this thing immediately...I'm sorry if I passed it along, I had no way of knowing...but I'm secure now and in the future. Here's the treatment page for W32/Magistr.b@MM I finally found at a McAfee site...the other .dam3 variation seems to be untraceable:

http://www.mcafee.com/anti-virus/viruses/magistr/

I guess, Fallible, your solution is looking more imminent.