Contrary to what I was told by two McAfee technicians in the last 2 days, I do not have a virus on my system. I am now back up and running and McAfee reports no problems.
The root of the problem has been isolated to a McAfee registry problem that was interacting with System Mechanic 9 in Vista 64. The issue is caused by a registry key at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\McAfee which is a link to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\McAfee. When ANY utility attempts a registry compacting or a backup of registry files, the registry link will become broken.
It would be most helpful if McAfee would resolve this issue.
Thank you,
-b