Malwarebytes (MBT) got rid of it and its registry shenanigans.
You have to play a bit of cat and mouse with ave.exe with the task manager stopping its process a few times while getting MBT installed.
I saved some grief by downloading MBT on a clean machine then copying the install file for MBT to a disk (or a thumbdrive). You can then load MBT on the afflicted machine with a lot less fuss. You will still have to joust with ave.exe as it starts when explorer is started to open MBT's install file.
Oh this was on a Vista machine.
