We have Norton but it doesn't have a little icon in the right hand corner of the desktop, so I don't know if it just runs all the time or what. And I don't know if it is updated but I'm going to check on that and get it running.

If in the past the icon was there, and now it's not, thats a potential sign that BugBear has infected your system. Aparently it tries to kill off anti-virus programs, as well as firewall programs. Try this and see if it finds anything relating to the BugBear worm.