JustAnwer.com

What he's saying does make some sense; however, I would be very leery to have someone I don't know take control over my computer.  They can then gain access to everything on your computer and in your memory.  You might want to try PM'ing liesje, I know she works in tech support and may be able to help you.

On my home PC, when I do alt-cntl-dlt and then select task list, there are 61 processes where active things are AOL and dog.com 

Not sure the number of processes are related to the ODBC connection, Refresh Data, and then Excel shutting down.  What a pain....why can't machines just work like they are suppose to.

DPU

HIJACKTHIS?  Does anyone know anything about hijackthis.com?  Is it safe?

An idoger, who rarely posts here anymore, just recommended hijackthis.com to a mutual friend who was having computer problems not 2 days ago. I thought it a very odd name when I first saw it. Unfortunately I wasn’t really paying attention to what they said about it, but they know a good amount about computers I think they have personally used this for home or work computers. So I would trust this site as a reputable source. If I can find out any more about it from them, I will post or have them post it themselves. 

Good luck.  I hate computer problems, especially at work.

 hijack this is a spyware/malware removal tool similar to spybot or adaware. it is supposed to be one of the best out right now. it is made by a company called trend micro. they have won many awards for their safety software.

 i used it here at work to repair a computer a few weeks ago.

unfortunately, your computer did work as programmed... thanks bill. :) if you are using internet explorer to surf with (or aol's browser-same thing), i recommend looking into a security suite that includes spyware/malware blockers. and be wary of opening email attachments (even if you know the sender) and clicking on email links.

if you can figure out what has infected your computer, google it. there are removal steps out there for almost everything. look at your installed programs through add/remove software to look for suspicious stuff. you might be able to find something suspicious by looking at the running processes on your task manager, but there is a lot of stuff that runs all the time. i just checked mine, there are 59 processes, and i feel safe in saying none of them are not supposed to be there.
 

Running a Hijack This scan is a popular suggestion online.  I have never used the program myself, but I believe the results of the scan indicate things that have changed in the registry.  It doesn't mean your computer has a virus or malware, but the scan log can indicate other things that might be at fault.  I don't see anything in your post that indicates it's probably a virus or malware infection.

If it were me, I'd start by reinstalling Excel.  Or, if this didn't always crash, I'd do a System Restore back to when it was still working.

As for the running processes, a lot of those are system processes that aren't necessarily apps YOU are working on, but processes that should be running.  If you see some that you know what they are and you don't want them running, go to Start > Run > msconfig and uncheck them in the Startup tab.