Thanks Bob. Sound advice.

I'm pretty sure I will have to finish up reinstalling, but in the meantime I have found a very handy tool on download.com (Process Blocker) which I am using to block any instances of iexplore.exe, whether launched by myself or the malware.
This tool seems to be effective and it tells me that iexplore.exe is trying to open every 2 minutes or so.
I guess the tool is so obscure that the malware writers didn't think to shortcircuit it.

Also I note that while iexplore.exe is blocked I am not getting any web search redirects.

at least this gives me some breathing space as I prepare the reinstallation (drivers, app. inventory, screenshots of settings, license keys etc..)