I keep the Windows Task Manager handy when I’m on the Internet, and each time I find a program running that I’m not familiar with, I do a search to find out what it is. Most of the time the information has been reassuring, but not in the most recent case. I found one called 55AutoRun; did a search; all I could find was 3 results with chinese characters. It sounds pretty ominous to me. I tried checking with Norton by e-mail and I got the run-a-round with instructions that are not related to the problem. Any ideas?

I did a search on 55Autorun too, and saw the Chinese characters. I suspect the reason there aren't many results are because the name of the file you're getting is auto generated.

Coming up with those Chinese characters, and I would almost bet dollars to donuts that you have some awful spyware, Malware or Trojan virus that could be logging your usernames and passwords, and perhaps even your credit card numbers.

There are even malware programs that take over your computer when it's not in use, and actually send out spam messages to thousands or even millions of people, using your ISP mail provider. I suspect you have a variant of this virus.

How do you get rid of it?

I would use a combination of your antivirus software (update and run), as well as a good spyware removal product like Spybot and a startup manager such as WinPatrol".
In the end, that's no guarantee, but it's certainly a good start to see if it helps. Failing that solution, format and reinstall as always effective.