Advice on improving my commputer

My machines>>(custom made)
Asus A socket motherboard
756mbs ram
1.6 athlon processor(old)
creative modem
80 gig hard drive
nvida old 128mg video card
Windows 2000 >>>I have not dowloaded or updated this because I am always reformating my pc to get rid of problems : ( <<<<<<

I have been having internet problems for a while and I will fix them, but only to find that suddenly my interent doesn't work anymore. The first times it was viruses I never really got rid of and finally the internet just stopped working. This time i started out with AVG and adware S & E. My pc seemes to be clean but after about 3 minutes both the IE and firefox say cannot open search page/error connecting to server. I have a trojen downloader on thats like drsmart ware or something that doesnt seem to go away with AVG and adware wont detect it.

I ordered pccillin downloadable version of newegg and it will come in soon.
should I reformat my pc one more time update my operating system (with slow dialup interent)and put on pc cillin?

Any advice about anything i should do to my pc would help a huge amount

thanks

 

Hey thatnks for the post, i am going to try some of the stuff right now, to see if i can get the interent working, but when I get my AV program i will reformat (i only have 20 gigs of my hd formated anyways) my pc and follow all of MG's imunization steps.

I have some other questions,
I have really slow internet, should i download service pack 4 or buy cd.
I dont want to spend the money on Xp, do you think I can make my pc work smoothly without it? (I would go ahead and buy it but it only works for one motherboard and I want to upgrade my old pc sometime here...)


Thanks so muchos

 

Dialup, 40 bps