Poorly PC, Very poorly PC...Help, Please!

Sorry to post yet another thread, but the following that I posted in my "Strange goings on" thread doesn't seem to be attracting any attention: -

Oh God.....
What a mess I'm in.
Somebody Help, I don't know where to begin to tell you what has happened since last I was here but my PC is falling apart.
I'm seriously thinking that it is only fit for landfil now!
Scotty passed me on to the a-Squared team, and since then it's gone from bad to worse to absolute dispair.

In short, I've done a factory re-set to escape what was deemed to be a damaged OS, after removing a virus.
Much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth later, I'm back, but with a crippled OS, that still freezes for fun when using IE7, I've not downloaded Firefox yet, but since this happened in both browsers before I did the re-set, I've no confidence that things will be different.

I have managed to prepare a "system report" that is a mile long notepad file, but don't want to post it publicly, as it contains financial details that I wouldn't want broadcast.
I don't know the value of this report, it was something the Sunbelt Helpdesk people asked for way back down the road from Hell when I was trying to get their firewall to behave, but I'm way beyond that now.

Please someone sort me out, I'm seriously feeling that modern technology is not for me, and am genuinely considering dumping my beloved machine in the landfill and contenting myself with TV!

six-h

Sorting out software problems from possible hardware ones can be quite a challenge.
With a 5 year old computer I would suggest focusing on hardware first, you mention a factory restore. There are 2 types, one is a repair operation of windows, leaving installed programs and malware intact, the other, a true reinstall back to factory defaults is not without problems either. The computing/internet world has changed a lot in the last 5 years and that makes putting an older computer back on the internet even more of a challenge.

Thanks chewy,
Scotty has replied to my original post under "Strange Goings on"
The re-set was just that, not a repair, and God it was a hard road back, SP2, 100 stubborn updates!
anyway, I think I'd better ask all commers to view?respond via "Strange Goings On"
in this forum.
thanks for taking an interest!
six-h