Problems with windows 2000 pro system

This is really complicated, so please bear with me. I am trying to work on a computer that is extremely compromised. Info on the machine is limited but I really need some help. When I first started on the machine it would not do much of anything. I will boot up (very slowly) Once I get it booted I cannot get to much of anywhere. I am using my internet connection to work on it. The person who owns it uses dail-up and I use DSL. The machine does not have a NIC so I am connecting using USB. He has two hard drives c and d. c is justabout full. When I finally was able to get to the Microsoft site and download the sp4, I rebooted and then tried to install it. It would not do the install with the archive, said there was not enough HD space. (Drive d is practically empty has about 2 gigs of empty space). I tried installing the other way (Without archive). It went well until the installer said "running processes after install". Then it froze on me. I let it stay there for hours but the progress bar did not move any. I do not know what to do now. The machine still boots up but will not get to the internet. It has a virus problem and I have no way of fixing it without tools from the internet. I have run AVG scanner, Ad-Aware, installed "All in one secret maker" to try to block the popups and stuff. I installed Firefox to use so I could get around all the stuff IE was doing, but to no avail, Even when I use Firefox IE still loads all the advertizing pages. Anybody have an idea of any avenues I might take to fix this thing? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This guy bought the computer used and knew nothing about updating his OS. My guess is it has not been updated at all. Microsoft will not support any SP before sp3 so he cannot update. I removed or quarantined almost 200 instances of Adware and 98 instances of viruses before I did anything else. He has TFThot.exe in his processes and I know that is trouble but I cannot get online to try to use something to get rid of it. By the way, I was able to get online for limited periods of time before I did the sp4 install but now I cannot get the browser to open at all. I uninstalled Firefox because I thought there might be some kind of conflict there. He does not have a windows disk, and when I tired to validate his OS to download windows defender it would not validate. He bought the computer from a school system and it was probably on a LAN.

Any help or ideas will be apprediated greatly. Thanks for a great forum!

 

Is there any data you need to save? Can you contact the machine manufacturer and get replacement media?

 

Trying to clean up a pc this infected is a waste of time, and I have stopped trying. especially if you don't have OS cd....I would have him buy an OS and then install it with as much software as you can...

 

The part of the matter also is that Drive C: is almost full. There is no room for the page file and Windows to run properly. I also agree that doing a full re-install will be the proper thing to do.

 

I was finally able to get most of the spyware and viruses off that computer i asked about in my last post. I ran the ewido anti malware app and then BFU in safe mode. I am now able to connect to the internet without much problem . I think when I ran the BFU( Brute Force Uninstaller) it must have gotten rid of some needed .dlls . When I boot up I get an error message "error loading w00cb5d1.dll". Now when I try to run ewido it say it can't run because it cannot find "dynamic link library engine .dll .
Now that I can access the internet, I tried to update the OS but everytime I try to run the updater I get an error number "0x8DDD0009"
This machine has very meager resources but I just hate to let anything beat me. It only has 64 megs. of RAM ( I am tempted to see if I can buy additional RAM for it, but the diagnostic I ran on it says it the motherboard is only capable of using 128 megs. I looked in the case and it does have two dimm slots. Don't know why it cannot use any more RAM than that. The diagnostic could not identify the type of memory it is using and Crucial could not identify it either. The diagnostic says the processor is 222 mghzt. I did not know that existed.
I know you said this is probably a hopeless case, but I just do not want to give up. I already suggested to him he needs to just get another machine but he wants this one fixed for some reason, and now I don't wanna let it beat me.
I downloaded Belarc Advisor to see if it would give me anymore info, It installed alright, but when I run it, it will not show the results of its analysis.
On a different issue, can anybody tell me why I did not get email alerts when my previous thread got a response?
Thanks for bearing with me (that is if you have not given up on me already)

 

Hi emt3920, Welcome to TSG!!

I've merged your old thread into this new one so the folks trying to help you can continue.

Sometimes there are problems with getting the replies. Here is one thread with some discussion: http://forums.techguy.org/site-comments-suggestions/482626-solved-not-getting-emails.html

You will find more in that forum.