problem please help

Hi.
Never had problems with my pc until yesterday.
Firstly, I'm very careful, have McAfee Security Suite 2006 (updated last
week from McAfee VS9 and FirewallPlus)
Spydoctor (full scan daily) and Microsoft AntiSpy, as well as my ISP's very
good Virus and Antispam campaign.

Yesterday when I went on my machine, out of the blue, everything I clicked
on started to take 1-2 minutes to respond as well as the Windows Programs
menu and task manager. I rebooted the machine . At first it asked if I
wanted to go SafeMode, a different screen to the F8 when you can choose. it
continued as if to start then went back to that odd safe mode thing like in
a loop, It did this 3 times and then started normally. But it took over 10
minutes to fully load everything. And again everything I did took ages.
This is with Start>Programs (but not Start), the menu opens but just grey
and just hangs for ages, but then ok in spurts. the right click on any of
the system task icons, particularly Task manager. Task manager process
didn't show anything with high cpu usage except windows Explorer. When it
'wakes up' it is fine for a few seconds. IE takes an age. Right clicking on
the desktop is fine and opening program seems ok.
Also a few fonts have gone Italic, and the following icons are gone and
showing generic.
All Office2003 icons, PaintshopPro10, and Adobe. All other icons are ok.

I did a Virus Scan and Spy Doctor and Microsoft AntiSpy, all came up with 0.
Restarted in safe mode, was just as slow, and ran VirusScan while I went to
work in safe mode, 7 hours later when I returned, McAfee VS stuck on a file.
c:Windows/$/KB899591/update/update_sp2QFE.inf
(the slashes are the other way around but cannot find them on my laptop
sorry)
Could minimise it but could not close it except in Task manager.
So I then did a system restore to Monday when all was well, but there is no
change at all.
I deleted a lot of stuff in Add/Remove. A couple of things came up with the
following error:
"Windows installer service could not be accessed. This can occur if you are
in safe mode or if the windows installer is not properly installed." but of
course I'm not in safe mode. I don't know if this is all part of the problem
but I thought I'd include everything that's different just in case.

PC Packard Bell , Only 1.5 years old.
XP sp2,
Office 03.
40 Gb only 2/3 free space
448 Mb of Ram

Please can someone help me fix this nightmare.
Jen


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