yahoo, got it all fixed!

Uninstalled Threatfire & Zone Alarm and the user switching was fast again.

so did some more internet searches and found I had a version of ZA that had conflicts with MS & updates { I thought they had just changed the interface/theme- because it looked different than the version I had before}

So I found the version I had before and voila- all good again just like before ... so added Threatfire back and still good.
whew about drove me nuts for awhile...

finally found the right sound driver too

and now that it is fixed I backed up the system with 2 different programs to an external hard drive.