It was not a tdl3 infection.  I figured out the issue when I went to reformat the hard drive.  It was a memory issue.  I had thrown Corsair after market memory in right from the start and it wasn't working right.  When I went to reformat, I got a memory error message, opened a chat session with Dell  support and finally tried memory out of another box.  The weird thing is that all of the system diagnostics said everything was fine until such time I reformatted.  
I realize this seems like a software error, but I cant seem to find info about why this error pops up.  Windows 8, 64b, upon boot goes to pop up box: Explorer.exe (at top) then says Hard Error.  Uninstalled BitDefender thinking that was the issue, was locking up (blue screen with sad face) when I was on firefox; uninstalled FF and installed Nightly.   Any help?? B
[Moved] Explorer.exe "Hard Error" -- Vostro 270