HELP! - my XP install needs an enema

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Until today I seemed to have a rock-solid Windows XP Pro SP2 install on a 3.0 GHz P4 workstation.

My woes started this afternoon when I booted and the system wouldn't come all the way up (I could see my wallpaper, but no task bar, start menu or desktop icons). I used Task Manager to reboot and then it came up but minus Norton Auto-Protect (icon now had red X) and ZoneAlarm. Since I had problems with these two apps conflicting in the distant past, I thought I'd re-install them. Oddly enough, I couldn't uninstall through the normal mechanism - the uninstallers would hang (but not with 100% CPU....the dia
logs would just freeze). I finally got each removed (ZoneAlarm via Safe mode and Norton via some special removal tool they have).

When I go to reinstall Norton, I can't get it to reinstall. When I click on "Install Norton System Works"....the first time it ignores me and does nothing; on subsequent attempts it claims the installer is already running.

Now I'm noticing as I navigate around Windows Explorer or the Start Menu, it will hang every few minutes. However, if I go to Task Manager, select Run and specify "explorer.exe", things magically work again until the next hang.

I've run virus scans (using Symantec's painfully slow web-based utility) and spyware scans (using Ad-Aware and Spybot) and haven't found anything.

Anyway, at this point it seems something is definitely corrupt and I'm about to reinstall but with all the apps I've got loaded, that will easily take a full day. Does anyone have any ideas how I can give Windows an enema without having to do a painful reinstall?

Many thanks in advance!