I appreciate all the comments and suggestions provided on this thread. I ran malwarebytes and spysoftware as suggested. I then rebooted and uninstalled both malwarebytes and spysoftware so it would not interfere with my anti-virus software. Tried to get on the internet - no success - I kept getting notice that “proxy server......”. So I unplugged the whole set-up for the time being until I can figure out what is going on with the proxy server. I checked the number and it is correct.
Good luck.