Possible malware in NVIDIA program nvtray.exe

Hopefully this is the right board for this ... long story short ... about a week ago I noticed I was constantly getting "connection reset" whenever online. Check with my ISP etc ran all applicable tests (pings/etc) tested with/without firewall, etc but could find nothing.

Then the other day I noticed (System Explorer) that a nvtray.exe was constantly trying to access network. This is simply a program that loads the NVIDIA controls to the tray. I tried to stop it from loading (per their instructions) but this didn't work. So I checked it with NIS, NPE, and DrWeb and all said it was clean. But I cannot help but think that there is something wrong when (left unchecked) it will simply continue to try to gain access when the program really has no need to do so. I'm not sure what else to do or how to proceed. I set a firewall block to the program with NIS and am just basically uneasy ... any suggestions.