Slow start up with a virus possiblity

[Guest]

I have a toshiba satellite with 60gb, 512, windows xp sp2, nortons, aol
spyware, microsoft updates.
I currently run 60-65 processes all of the time. My comp has been quite
slow. I am not sure which processes i MUST leave running and which ones are
safe to shut down. I know this is a kind of basic question, but i believe i
should only be running 28-35 processes. How can i tell which ones i can turn
off.
Now yesterday i believed we were infected with a virus through a cd. My
aol spyware has detected the usual and is running fine. A system scan was
run and found a hijacker, trojan virus. So i blocked all, but about halfway
through the process i received a prompt that said it was unable to complete
it. Nortons has become disabled and when i try to turn on live updates, it
says something to the effect, that a file is missing. Trying to run msn live
updates, the first prompt i get

"Files required to use Microsoft Update are no longer registered or
installed on your computer. To continue:
Register or reinstall the files for me now (Recommended)
Let me read about more steps that might be required to solve the problem
I select all of the proper steps and it takes me right back to the first
prompt.
Everything on my computer is slow but my internet connection is just
fine or about as good as it has been. But it takes upwards of 15-20 minutes
to be up and semi operational. I have obviously already removed the program
that i believe caused it, but i think it might be to late.
Also, all of my restore points are gone....
Any and all suggestions would be great. Also, I am not real computer
savvy, i get by ok, so if you could keep it simple please.... Thanks

 

[Guest]

I dont really know the answer to your problem but i know my computer runs 47
processes and works fine. Maybe you could try Spybot S&D as i had norton
before and it was no good whatsoever. Its worth a shot. When installing a
virus program make sure you have uninstalled all other anti virus programs,
as this will cause conflict.

 

[Guest]

I think my problem runs much deeper than that. I cannot generate any logs, i
can't defrag. I think i forgot to add that recently, within the last 2 weeks
we have loaded ie7 and firefox/mozilla. It seems that i have some internet
explorer files that i am not to sure about.
IEXPLORE.EXE-27122324 c:\windows.prefetch
IEXPLORE.EXE.hdmp
IEXPLORE.EXEmdmp both are running in the docs and settings and the hdmp
is running about 179,000KB
If anyone is going to tell me to remove them, please tell me how. Is it
possible to reload XP or will i lose it all. if i back up my files to disk,
won't that bring the problem with it. I have been working on this for a few
days now and having problems.