System Erratic and Sluggish - Need Troubleshooting Help

[jldodge]

Here is the scenario ... Windows XP Pro working fine, absolutely no problems. Loaded IE 7 Beta 2 (big mistake). Had all kinds of problems with banking website and others where IE could not interact with their secure sites/servers. Finally gave up, uninstalled IE 7, and regressed back to IE 6.

System worked a bit better but still had some bugs in IE (probably due to some lingering IE 7 files). Ran Acronis Privacy Suite to clean things up. System starts to freeze when the screensaver activates. All I can do is restart.

Finally repaired Windows XP saving all of my programs and settings. I reinstalled SP2 from a file since I could not access Windows Update (error 0x60248006). After that, I still cannot access Windows Update (same error as ALL updates fail). Suspect BITS and after all the research, still cannot get it to START. My next step is to use Dial-a-fix from djlizard. Any other thoughts/suggestions?

Also, now the system is unstable and frequently has to be rebooted after executing a program and hanging for a prolonged period of time. Suspect I have some driver problems since many of the video/audio drivers were updated after I originally installled Windows XP. But I wonder if that is all ...

I need to do some serious trouble shooting. Have perused multiple forums and don't know if I have a SW or HW problem. But, according to my research, I have to go through a process of elimination. Seems I should start with the SW stuff ... is that a good assumption? What steps or SW utilities should I use.

Any thoughts/comments/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I am reasonably comfortable using more technical solutions but am far from being an expert since I don't do this for a living.

Thanks in advance ...

[jldodge]

Can someone give me some guidance here. Would really appreciate any and all comments.

Thanks in advance ...

[Panama Red]

If you've already done a repair/install and you're having WU issues, I'd suggest backing up all your files to a different partition or different hard drive and start over with a clean install. You can spend hours or days tring to find the cause of this and it may not have been IE7 that messed it up. The short and clean way is a total nuke and pave.

[jldodge]

I have a lot of software loaded ... Is there a way to save all the settings OR can I do a backup on tape and then restore after I do the clean install to get me back to the current setup?

[glc]

You may be restoring the problems. I'd get all your installs sorted out and ready to go.

Welcome to the world of beta software, by the way. You should not test software on a production machine.