Multiple iexpore.exe, opera.exe problem?

Once I open either Opera or Internet Explorer 8 I notice in the process manager multiple copies of the process but with varying RAM usage. This happens every time I click open either of the web browsers. Sometimes the processes multiply faster than I can end them and indefinitely, but more commonly it seems to insist on having around five and will always start them again after I've attempted to end some.

This problem is alongside, and I suspect related to, a problem I've been having with google on Opera. Fairly often, when I make a search and click on some of the results I notice in the address bar that I am not being taken to the address stated on the results page. Before anything loads I am skipped through a number of different suspect-looking domains and I end up on a spammy looking search engine called Gomo. On one of the occasions I noticed this happening, I was being redirected away from all addresses apart from Wikipedia and BBC pages I clicked.

I have ran the McAffee my laptop, which is only a week old, came with. I have used AdAware and MalwareBytes and none of the scanners came up with anything. I probably would have let this whole thing slide for a while, even though it is worrying, but now I find that I can't open any files on my system now I think of it the start up of the laptop stuck on a black screen after log in that I've never seen before.

Internet Explorer 8 64bit

Opera (most recent stable build)

Windows 7 premium home edition

Dell Inspiron 15

As far as I can tell, process manager shows that I'm only running the most essential processes.