Problems uninstalling Internet 8

Hello.  I just got my computer back up and running again after a huge problem with viruses, spyware, and malware, and now I thinik I'm back to square one!  On Saturday, I had Dell help me re-install windows, my drivers, etc.  Today I was at download.com and was looking up a program to create a cookbook - I'm doing one for my mother for xmas - anyway, and I spotted a program for dog recipes - not to eat dogs - but for treats and stuff.  I like to cook so I thought I would install it and give it a try.  I have mcafee on my computer and it informed me that this program would change the windows.ini file.  I didn't think it would do anything big deal so I went along with the rest of the installation. 

After I installed it, I opened it up quickly as another file for the cookbook maker was still downloading.  I clicked on what I thought was part of the program and it took me to a website.  I closed the site out quick, looked at a couple of the recipes and then closed it down.  Then I got worried about that windows.ini file and went to the add remove programs and it wasn't listed.  It wasn't even listed in the start menu.  There again, I didn't think anything would be wrong since everything appeared to be working properly.  After finishing the download of the program, I installed it, and everything seemed fine.  I restarted the computer just to make sure that there wasn't anything running in the background that would cause my system to not respond.    Well, now everything seems to be not responding.

Last night too, I downloaded Internet Explorer 8.0 beta version 2 - I hated the way it worked so I unistalled it - it worked fine the first time.  Now I did a system restore a few minutes ago to yesterday - well, of course now I have Internet Explorer 8.0 beta version 2.  I wanted 7 so I went to unistall it and everything was going fine until it started giving me error messages that files could not be found or could not be unistalled - something like that. 

I'm also concerned that I have another problem because the tabs where the sites are up - there isn't anything listed there - just what looks like a circle that's blue with the letter E facing towards the top right. 

I'm sorry to list another problem on this post - I just really need help.  I would go back to dell, but the last couple of times, I was on the phone or online with them for almost two hours!

I would appreciate any help anyone can give me.

Thanks so much!

Wendy