Is there a detailed "How To" site for eradicating browser hijacking and other malware?

Yes and you already know the site. BleepingComputer, but it will take up to 2 years before you will feel experianced enough to do virus removal and there are more sites but that is a very good place to start.

About your redirection, it is a good chance that it is rootkit related and could be the TDLS rootkit. The hackers have been bundling this in with their rogues and most software's have not been effective, however, there are good reports coming from HitmanPro removing this threat

Cnet download>http://download.cnet.com/Hitman-Pro-3/3000-2239_4-...

Or try Gmer the number 1 rootkit remover utility

Gmer>http://www.gmer.net/#rootkit

Use SystemLookup as a reference resource for HijackThis

http://www.systemlookup.com/

and BleepingComputers Start-up List

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/

Tutorial on HijackThis by BleepingComputer

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial...

For when you encounter a file that you are not sure of you can upload it to VIRUSTOTAL>http://www.virustotal.com/

and they will analyze it and when the results are shown, it will give a list of what software's are detecting the threat and which are removing it, kinda takes the guess work out of the equation.

Use combofix from bleepingcomputer.com, then download Hitman Pro 3.5 from softpedia.com/cnet.com and just in case you do have a rootkit on your system use GMER from majorgeek.com(Use gmer to scan and anything in red delete.)

Future Protection use this wizard to recommend security protection for your system:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/secwiz

or go to safe mode and then do the above:

To get into Safe Mode with Networking:

1. Log out and reboot your machine.

2. When the machine starts the reboot sequence, press the F8 key repeatedly.

3. Select Safe Mode with Networking from the resulting menu.

and if not use revo uninstaller if it is a legit program (supposely if it's not a malware). If nothing works just use Dr. Web Live CD to fix most of the program or a bootable cd such as ubcd4win.

Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware are the best free products there are. If you don't want to use these, why are you asking for help? These are proven malware, adware and spyware removal, but you want someone or something to show you what is "actually spyware?" Why bother using good products if you don't trust them to remove the junk. I've used SuperAntiSpyware for several years, and trust it implicitly to remove the stuff I don't want and leave the stuff I DO want. The program knows the difference. Apparently you don't.

Easier way-

Make a secondary account on your computer with administrative rights

Run Ad-aware free version scanner from there on full system scan settings and it can access the data archive on your other accounts on that computer and detect/remove the virus's that are on that account without being restricted by the settings the maleware has put on your computers removal attempts.

Good luck

www.majorgeeks.com ----in the right upper info box ---spyware removal ----use step 6

been ther done that ---and if u still have trouble --join and post --use same page and follow the instructions to the letter--be nice these people do this for free