Malware filter and XP

Mornin' all
Looks like a great forum!
My first post.

System:
Pentium 4 1.5g
256 ram
120g storage on 2 physical drives
XP Home dual boot with 98 on other partition.
dsl
laser printer attached (not networked)

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

As a long time user of AdAware, I BecameAware of some missed ads etc.
Downloaded and ran a well respected malware program which shall remain nameless, but seems to have something in common with robots and spys
Deleted and retreived several items - seemed ok.
Allowed whole list to run - would not retreive several items.
At this point I Erased the program and apparently some vital files or information with it.

Lost internet and printing, RESTORE POINTS and more.
Now one of the svchosts takes all available processor time, Usually 99%.
Did some basic troubleshooting - using msconfig, services - have narrowed down to RPC Locator and RPC. When disabled, processor returns to normal values (of course a lot of functionality is gone).
dll s look right (same folder size) but it appears to me as though svchost keeps searching for something.

Even tried a reinstall (repair) from my registered disk, which did not help. 98 continues to work ok.

Sorry to be so verbose, but if you've read to here, I must have gotten your attention.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Cav

ps Any good XP troubleshooting sites or toolkit ideas? I'm still in DOS mentality and have fallen severely behind!

 

Was it something I said?