Blank Device Manager and other problems

Hi
I am trying to help a friend figure out what went wrong with his computer.
He thought maybe he got hit with some infection but we have run all the scans and cleaned everything we found but yesterday..... he was just disconnected from the internet. When he tried to get back on... it kept saying "page not found" etc.

He checked all the connections, rebooted, did all the general stuff he could think of and still nothing. His laptop in another part of the house is fine.

When I had him try and go to device manager it gave a blank screen. We searched for a solution and a couple of posts recommended it was his plug and play that needed reinstalling. We went to services and most of his were disabled. There was no way to restart the plug and play...and a bunch of the others.

System restore had only the current restore point so that wont work.
He tried to do a repair install and it wouldnt let him since his current OS is more recent than his disk.. (SP2 vs SP1 I am guessing) Is there a way to do a repair install from his windows folder in C? .... We cant download and burn since laptop has no burner.

We are at a loss here for what might have caused this.. and how to correct it. Any help would be appreciated.
He has WINXP Pro SP2.

 

have you tried to go to,click start,click run and type in sfc /scannow ,it may ask you for xp cd in it.

 

The sfc /scannow did not fix it.
any other suggestions?

 

start, run services.msc.

Make sure the Plug and Play service is running. If it isnt, start it and set it to automatic. That should resolve the blank device manager.

 

thanks tons.. we got it fixed.